Lilac and Purple
by Lady Keane
Summary: Robbie's past has long been buried - it is a part of the town's history that all concerned would rather forget. When an unknown danger is found lurking in his father's old house, Robbie is compelled to confront everything that still haunts him.
1. Prologue

LILAC AND PURPLE

"_Soppiness is at the very heart of the successful love story. Without a sufficient degree of soppiness, there is a danger of the communication being laid aside by the reader, to be read at some future date together with the gas bill."_

–Stephen Fry in the televised "Jeeves and Wooster" series

Based upon the novel "Thank You, Jeeves" by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

Dramatised by Clive Exton

PROLOGUE

From the personal memoirs of La Fata Lillà, opera diva

April 16, A.D. 1980

Reykjavik, Iceland

How serendipitous. Just as I place pen on paper I am struck by another consuming state of wonder at how perfectly beautiful he is. He has impulsively taken it upon himself to illustrate how he imagines Italy will be. Fingers smudged with graphite, his pale little brow knotted in concentration, I can see he is yet again using an excessive amount of purple. Ah, now he moves onto the orange. He remembers what I told him about the warm weather. Oh, dear Odin, what a crime that it is so far past his bedtime – I'll have to drag him away from this soon. His father's temper is sure to arise in him again.

Some days he has been excessively giddy at the prospect of traveling, drinking in my descriptions of Covent Garden and La Scala. Strangely, his bad days manifest in silent resentment against me for parting him from his childhood home. Instead of his usual rages, he takes to hiding, often in our little secret gully below the copse of birch trees at the playground. I take a guilty pleasure in this – I feel vindicated at every little display of his elven blood winning out. However, it is far too much to bear in the moments when despair is the emotion that overrides all others. He lasers into me with my own grey-green eyes, quiveringly asking me why we have to leave. The sooner he is enthralled by the sensuous crafts of the opera backstage, the better. In such a milieu, I can be absolutely certain, he will take after his mother.

Mercifully, his eyes are currently twinkling with glee, fixed on the paper before him. It is simply irrefutable – he is a creator, if not an artist. I have seen other children in similar acts of creation at his kindergarten. Their attention is diverted by the slightest waft of breeze, building blocks and crayons sent to scatter as they head off to chase their whimsies. Robbie will sit there with the same drawing, his aura of concentration simply dazzling, until he has caked every inch of the page with bright waxy colour. The seeming explanation is the shadow of Ignatius' temperament, but as I cast my mind back down my own lineage I count dozens of elves who shunned the typical sanguine fickleness of our kind to enrich our dominion with their talents. Ah, I was truly born in the wrong age.

All the same, I am glad he has been spared the burden of inheriting my pointed ears. I have been lucky that my place in the human world has facilitated wearing long hair and the ridiculously large hats of high fashion, but it is a difficulty all the same. If my prayers for Robbie are heeded, he will comfortably mix with the hoi polloi of the continent, seen as a charming, perfectly normal little human boy (save for perhaps possessing rather otherworldly beauty – I laugh at my own vicarious vanity!), and will grow up to be a well-respected man about town, completely at ease with the people and society surrounding him.

Shall I ever reveal to him the truth? It may be an issue relying on his own curiousity… many times I have envisioned him toying with my ringlets to discover the reason why Mamma hides her ears. If most children have a flair for coaxing out secrets, my intrusive little Robbie is the definitive authority. I only hope that finding out won't hurt him.

But what awaits us in the immediate future – after the inevitable morning tantrum – is a new world of labyrinthine hallways, the touch of opulent fabrics (many of them purple), the spectacle of the set designers and stage magicians assembling their elaborate mechanisms, and most importantly, the echo of rich beautiful voices ringing throughout cavernous theatres.

Oh, how splendid! He has slumped over the table, his soft, high breath calm and slow. I won't have to drag him into his bedroom. The Gods have been kind and another little tempest has cleared before it could begin. So perfectly beautiful, perfectly unaware, my angel.

I must tuck him in quickly lest he wake and grab angrily at the hem of my frock with those clever little hands.

**

_A/N: This will inevitably be one of those lengthy fics aspiring to the epic… I've written plenty of flippant one-shots for this fandom, but I want to make an attempt at an involved, meaty story that really draws out as much from the characters as possible (which is certainly a challenge with a TV show from Cbeebies and ABC Kids. :P ) And a warning, SportaRobbie will be imminent in later chapters- because it is a kickass pairing made of win and your mum knows it._

_Starting out with the retrospective is a great way to drop bombshells early on. ZOMG, Robbie is part elf and he doesn't know. ZOMG, he had a happy childhood and a great (if not slighty Mary-Sue-ish) mother. ZOMG, Opera. I love the juxtaposition of Lazytown with something like Italian Opera… if mixing Bugs Bunny with Wagner can work for Chuck Jones, this can work for me, tee hee. Both feature big gestures, big visuals, broad emotions and appealingly archeypal characters. And general fabulous campiness, to boot._

_Also, the elves: my depiction of them will attempt to emulate the myths and folktales about Iceland's huldurfolk, but I'm sure that the some of the typical pop-culture, Tolkien-esque conceptions will prevail (which isn't so bad, seeing as Tolkien derived everything from Norse/Germanic mythology himself)._

_I'm posting in batches of two or three chapters, which I hope isn't too much. ^^;_

_And yes, Devart people, the reason I am publishing it here as well is because I AM a comment whore._


	2. Chapter One: When I Am Laid In Earth

CHAPTER 1

_When I am laid in earth_

_Remember me_

_But ah, forget my fate._

—Dido's Lament

From the opera "Dido and Ǽneas" by Henry Purcell

The offices of the Town Hall were a curious place. Dumpy adults in bright polyester suits seemed to be constantly on their feet, rushing from one department to the next brandishing important-looking papers and files. Noticing the rather out-of-place sports hero, many of the otherwise harried public servants looked up from their piles of work and heated conversations to smile and wave jovially at him. And, Sportacus being Sportacus, he felt the need to smile and wave back at everyone.

"Good afternoon! Hello! Hi!" His cheerful tenor voice disrupted the atmosphere, a great contrast to the monotonous insectiod hum of the office's fluroescent lights.

"This way, dear." Ms Busybody ushered him along with a firm, gentle hand. "We mustn't keep these nice men and women from the affairs of local government."

They reached her office, situated on a corner of the building, surveying the large park across the road. When she clicked the door shut, the air changed.

Tearing his eyes away from the trees outside, Sportacus watched Bessie occupying herself with the little kettle that sat on one of her cluttered surfaces.

"Tea? Oh, no, of course not. How about some water instead, dear?"

"Thanks, Ms Busybody," the hero obliged, taking a rather pretty little glass tumbler from her.

He sat on the edge of the coffee table, waiting for the woman to begin. He had never really seen her quite as sombre as this. She had barely said anything that afternoon when she came to collect him from a game of football with the children. She had simply told him that she had important information to give to the sports hero, information that was not suitable for the sensitive youngsters that were with him. Although he was saddened by the disappointed looks on their faces, Sportacus also felt a little proud that Bessie considered him mature enough for such a weighty matter.

She remained silent as she sat down opposite him and took a long, reassuring sip of tea. Sportacus supposed that she had been saving up all her words for this moment.

Eager to listen, he leaned forward and entreatied her with a wide, friendly smile.

"So what did you want to say?"

She returned his gaze, her focus firm and steady.

"You said yesterday that you were concerned about the recent whereabouts of Robbie Rotten?"

This must have been serious. Since when had Bessie used that manner of speech with him?

"Well, nobody has seen him for weeks. I guess I'm mostly just worried for him," Sportacus shrugged, faltering a little.

Bessie exhaled softly. "Sportacus, ever since you came to town, it seems you have been not only Robbie's warden, but also his primary target. And if you suspect something is amiss with him, I readily believe you."

She paused here, reaching for a large laminated file sitting on the coffee table.

"It is only right that you should know as much as possible about this man. This is not something I impart to you lightly. I trust you to use this information for the good of both the town and Robbie himself."

"Of course." Sportacus didn't even have to reflect on such a responsibility.

Bessie finally relieved him with a small maternal smile.

"What have the children told you about Robbie?"

The elf thought for a moment. "He's lazy?"

Bessie couldn't help but chuckle. "No, dear, about where he comes from."

"Well, Stingy and Trixie once said that his father was some kind of… mad scientist."

She opened the file, foraging through the loose papers within. Soon she produced an old photograph, its colours yellowed slightly with age, and handed it to Sportacus.

"That's not quite true. His name was Dr. Ignatius Deverhill. One of the most brilliant engineering scientists in the world."

Sportacus examined the man in the photo. There was Robbie's chin and nose. Dr. Deverhill had the air typical of all Great Thinkers— genteel and philosophical. He seemed much more earthy and composed than his volatile son, with solid brown eyes and a skin colour that was much ruddier than Robbie's own porcelain-pale complexion. And yet, beneath this comfortable impression, there seemed to lie something morose and stern about the man.

"He came to Lazytown to retire. He had made his millions and was interested in settling into private research. He purchased the underground bunker on the outskirts of town from the government, converting it into a workshop."

She handed Sportacus another photo of the Doctor standing beside the entrance, sans the large billboard that stood before it presently.

"In the beginning, everyone thought so well of Dr. Deverhill. Even your predecessor, #9. He was charming and good-natured, if a little secretive about his research. But there was always something very sad in his demeanour. You see, some years before he had lost his beloved wife to illness. She had been his only loved one— they had no children. Part of the reason he settled here was to escape the painful memories."

Sportacus, a creature unfamiliar with such trauma, frowned. "Poor man," he murmured.

Bessie continued, her tone changing slightly. "But then, one evening at a dinner party, he discovered her."

She got up from her chair, crossed the room and opened an old record player. Carefully sliding a well-looked after vinyl disc from its sleeve, she tenderly placed it on the turntable, and with a delightful fizzle and pop, a truly sublime soprano voice burst out of the speakers, sailing gracefully through a spirited orchestral melody.

"_Sempre libera degg´io_

_folleggiare di gioia in gioia, _

_vo´che scorra il viver mio_

_pei sentieri del piacer..."_

"La Fata Lillà. Arguably the greatest opera diva of our time," Bessie gushed. "She could outsing them all. Any role, be it coloratura, spinto, even Wagnerian, she could bring it to life with astounding technique and heart. And she was so beautiful…"

As the unfamiliar terms chimed in Sportacus' ears like pleasing new songs, he picked a newspaper article out of Bessie's file. 'LA FATA LILLÀ TO COME TO LAZYTOWN ON TRAVIATA TOUR', it proclaimed. A photo of the woman sat below the headline. Indeed, she was beautiful. And yet again, echoes of Robbie were all too apparent. Tall and slender, yet delicately curvaceous, with almost unreally pale skin and bright expressive eyes.

"He saw her in concert over a television broadcast, and from that moment he was consumed by her." Bessie sat back down as the record warbled on. "When she came here on tour in 'La Traviata', the company was invited to an elite after-party with the town's well-to-do. That is where Dr. Deverhill seduced her."

A muted male voice interrupted the divine singer on the record.

"_Amor è palpito_

_dell´universo intero,_

_misterioso, altero,_

_croce e delizia al cor."_

Sportacus' eyes skimmed across the article in his hands. "Hey! This says that she was born in Iceland!" The elf looked up at Bessie with a delighted, little-boy smile. "That's where _I'm_ from!"

The woman nodded. "And that is where she eventually returned to. After the glow of new romance died down, Lillà realised she had been tethered to a strict, old-fashioned, possessive man, too set in his ways to compromise. He demanded she give up the stage and devote herself to serving him. To compound matters, she was now pregnant with Robbie. She dreaded the idea of her child growing up in such a household, so she fled back to Reykjavik. The old wives' tale in Lazytown says that the Doctor never smiled again."

As Sportacus absorbed this, Bessie carefully drew even more loose media articles out of her file.

"All sources, public and private, declared that there was never a more devoted mother. She _worshipped_ him."

The pages, torn from various magazines and newspapers, showed Lillà protectively embracing Robbie at various ages: in one photo a plump newborn, in another a distracted toddler, and in yet another a pale, delicate-looking child of five or six. Sportacus felt his heart lurch. This tender cherub was the same menacing, stalking hooligan that took cruel delight in teasing him and the children.

"Lillà felt confident that her fame would protect the two of them from Deverhill," Bessie stated. "When Robbie was school-aged, she took to the stage once more, touring the world with her son. You can imagine how much the child would have learnt in this environment, surrounded by some of the greatest artistic experts in the world. I was told by those who worked with Lillà that when she was not on stage, she took Robbie to all the grandest museums, galleries and landmarks of the metropolitan centres. Oh, and also," she added with a small smirk, "some of the greatest patisseries as well."

A vivid mental image came to Sportacus: young Robbie, savouring Michelin-standard millefeuille, tiramisu and sachertorte, his little mouth and hands smeared with cream and crumbs. A kitten with the world's finest yarn.

"One night in Vienna, when he was nine years old, Robbie made his debut on stage. Lillà was starring in 'Madama Butterfly' at the Burgtheatre, and she demanded that her son play the silent role of Dolore, Butterfly's lovechild. Apparently, it was just after the curtain call that Robbie met his father for the first time."

Sportacus could feel Bessie become tense.

"The police said that it was a subdued moment backstage, when no-one was looking. Deverhill swooped in and took him. Lillà would have seen red. She followed him through the dim backstreets of Vienna, still wearing her stage costume. He wanted her back desperately… to _think_ that such a brilliant man was willing to stoop to the level of kidnapping their child. She cornered him in St. Stephen's Cathedral."

Bessie stared down at yet another newspaper article in her hands, fiddling with the paper slightly.

"The official line is that it was a tragic accident. Deverhill was certainly shattered by what happened. Some say that he intentionally pushed her down, but I'm not so sure. What _is_ important is that it happened right before Robbie's eyes."

A short pause came and went.

"She fell upon the altar steps, breaking her neck instantly."

The recorded aria in the background had long finished, the needle skipping rhythmically upon the crackling vinyl.

"Deverhill greased enough hands to be acquitted of all charges. Custody of Robbie was his and they came back here to Lazytown. He had a manor of his own in the upmarket part of town, but he decided to keep Robbie in his underground workplace. It turns out he had renovated a part of it to serve as rather luxurious living quarters for Lillà. Instead, it became her son's home."

"Deverhill was a strict and distant father. Robbie was only allowed outside for school, and the rest of the time he was made to study, including memorising his father's collection of engineering journals. I'm sure you can see in this how his current habits were formed. He received outstanding marks in his schoolwork, but…"

Bessie's voice wavered.

"…The authorities later discovered that the child was harshly mistreated. An average mark on any class exam earned him a severe caning. His father claimed it was for his own good, that his days in the opera backstage had made him weak. Deverhill loved and detested his son all at once. He saw his beloved Lillà in Robbie, but also saw him as the reason she had run away from Lazytown."

"Needless to say, he was a target for bullies. As he became a teenager, he increasingly fought back, defending himself by building up a reputation as a problem child. His marks at school remained excellent, but he constantly risked expulsion with his behaviour."

"Meanwhile, his father continued to change as well. Your predecessor noticed this first. Deverhill was increasingly secretive about his research. One night, #9 caught him grave robbing. That was when we decided to call in the state authorities. Deverhill's activities had become an issue of public safety that was too heavy for the town's hero to deal with alone."

"As far as we know, Deverhill is still rotting away in prison, his sentence compounded by the manslaughter of Lillà that should have originally sent him there. I am not sure if they would think to inform us of his death."

Bessie looked up. The light outside had faded, the sky a pale purple, laced with dark streams of cloud. The usually flighty Sportacus was a heavy statue perched upon her coffee table.

"Robbie would have been sent to a foster home had I not intervened on his behalf. I had seen his comings and goings, stealthy as they were, and he seemed to me to be perfectly independent. Both his parents had left a considerable fortune in his name, so there was no concern about what he would live on. I spoke with Milford, and we agreed to, ah, convince the welfare board to declare him an independent adult at sixteen."

"I believe he wished to cast off as much of his father as possible. The large manor Deverhill lived in is still Robbie's property, but has remained untouched by anyone for well over a decade. It was also at this point that the boy changed his name. The rumour is that Deverhill constantly told him that Lillà had spoiled him rotten, that he was a rotten child, a rotten boy… he must have eventually believed it."

Bessie fingered the handle on her mug of now cold tea, gazing out at the twilight. Suddenly, a small flash of light caught her peripheral vision, and she turned to see Sportacus' blue eyes filled with tears, the little droplets catching the last remaining sunshine. She melted.

"Oh, you poor child," she cooed, handing him a tissue. "I hope I haven't upset you too much."

"I'm just glad that I know now," he replied, doing his best to sound composed. "I guess I should have realised Robbie would only act the way he does if he was feeling sad inside."

Bessie was oddly touched at the childlike, simple way Sportacus had assessed it. She smiled at him.

"Please don't feel disheartened by what I've told you. This information is a gift for you to understand your aggressor more thoroughly … and to perhaps better contain him."

They shared a meaningful look.

"After all that's happened, he is still seeking out for attention. It makes me think… well, that insistent attitude of his means he hasn't given up on life. I believe someone could yet save him."

**

_A/N: So there you have it, my own take on the Sad Backstory that every young adult female fan knows Robbie has. (Come on, they get Stefan to warble a ballad like "Aleinn um Jolin" with that voice of his and DON'T expect girly, estrogeny imaginations to be provoked?) I felt I used a bit of restraint- too many stories go right to cliches like rape and homelessness and prostitution, without reprieve. I don't think Robbie has suffered much more than the young Jane Eyre here, but he lacks her solid constitution and coping mechanisms. Speaking of which, Deverhill is extremely Victorian- spare the rod, spoil the child, in perpetual mourning for a lost partner, all that stuff. I imagine him as being English, which would explain Robbie's cute oversized, sticky-outy ears, LOL. He's a bastard, but I'd like to think that one still holds a shred of sympathy for him._


	3. Chapter Two: I Am Come To Lock All Fast

CHAPTER 2

_I am come to lock all fast,_

_Love without me cannot last._

_Love, like Counsels of the Wise,_

_Must be hid from Vulgar Eyes._

_'Tis holy, and we must conceal it,_

_They profane it, who reveal it._

—Mystery

From the opera "The Fairy Queen" by Henry Purcell

The streets of Lazytown were gradually drained of their noise and commotion. As families headed home to their beds, all that was left was the quiet ringing of the crickets and the whisper of the far-off highway.

Sportacus could not return to his airship yet. His head was full of things he needed to pacify. As he left Town Hall, his pace quickened to a jog – instinctively, he fell back upon the comfort of exercise.

Without noticing, his feet took him uphill to the wealthier part of town, along a tree-lined road where a collection of large, ornate mansions stood as proud surveyors of the skyline. The night had now well and truly fallen, and Sportacus absently wondered how close it was to 8.08. He came to a sharp curve in the road which continued ascending higher up the hill.

He almost ran completely past it before he realised what house he had just come across.

The tall iron gate was bedecked in chains and padlocks. Neglected hedges sprawled up over the walls. Peering inside as best as he could, Sportacus thought the large garden looked like some deep dark forest. A brief moment of common sense glided through his head before natural curiousity overcame him.

A broken parlour window allowed him entrance. Dense, dense quiet pervaded the house, making every little movement of the nimble elf seem loud and invasive. Made somewhat reverent for these surroundings, Sportacus slowly began creaking across the aged floor.

Dust was everywhere. The intruder kicked up massive clouds of it with every footstep. A black piano sat in the corner of the parlour. Its small seat was pulled out, the lid to the keyboard was left up and a music score was set open on the stand. It looked as if the long-forgotten instrument was ready to be played, expecting someone to favour it with the stroke of their fingers. A part of Sportacus dearly wanted to touch it.

He leant in to examine the music score, forgetting that the delicate strands of notation would be indecipherable to him. All he could read in the gloom was the title of the piece:

"'_Tu, Tu, Piccolo Iddio!_' Libretto di Luigi Illica e Giuseppe Giacosa. Musica di Giacomo Puccini."

A dull, unrecognisable noise rang out somewhere in the distance. Sportacus nearly jumped out of his skin.

Heart galloping, he dashed across the floor, leapt out of the window and bounded back out onto the street.

"Sportacus!" Someone called out.

He turned around to find himself face to face with the children. Ziggy barreled into him with a child-sized bear hug. Stephanie stepped forward, a concerned look on her face.

"We thought it was you. What are you doing here?"

"I… wait, how did you guys find me?" The elf suddenly became concerned about his little charges being out and unaccompanied at such an hour.

"We're having a slumber party at Stingy's place tonight, and I saw you running along the road out the window," Pixel explained.

Sportacus' first instinct was to go into role model mode. "That doesn't mean you guys can rush out onto the street after dark. Do Stingy's parents know?"

The group suddenly assumed a collective expression of guilt.

"Come on, I'll walk you all back."

They obeyed him. As the children turned around, Stephanie cast a fearful look in the direction of the old house before joining them.

"You shouldn't have been in there, Sportacus," she scolded him as they sidled along. "Deverhill Manor is still private property."

"Yeah," Stingy said with a shade of iniquity, "the mansion of crazy old Doctor Devil!"

"The mad scientist of Lazytown!" Trixie added, moaning like a Hollywood monster for dramatic effect.

Ziggy's grip on Sportacus' hand tightened considerably.

"I heard he did experiments on Robbie Rotten's brain in there!" Stingy claimed.

"And his ghost eats little kids for dinner!" Trixie elaborated.

Ziggy squealed in terror.

"Guys, knock it off!" Stephanie exclaimed, managing to voice Sportacus' own opinion. "You're scaring Ziggy!"

"Why were you in there, anyway?" Trixie inquired brassily.

"A spot of ghost hunting?" Pixel helped.

Sportacus tried to find a placating answer.

"I… suppose I was just curious."

"Did it have something to do with what Bessie said to you today?" Stephanie asked delicately.

Dear Odin, but the girl was sharp.

The elf didn't say anything for the rest of the journey.

That night, the children all stayed up far past 8.08, concocting evermore elaborate theories on what their hero had really been doing inside 'Doctor Devil's' haunted house, and what sort of tantalising mystery Bessie had divulged to him in the quiet of her office.

**

A tiny beacon in the dim, the crystal continued to blink.

As Sportacus wrestled himself free of slumber, apprehension gradually began to claim him. Lazytown had always been utterly dormant at night. In all his time as its protector, with a few exceptions, not even a leaf had dared drop after sunset. If something had happened, it was bound to be a dreadful affair.

And yet, when he tried to feel out the source of distress, he detected nothing. It was as if the darkness had blinded his usually indispensable crystal.

The seconds passed him silently, like blood seeping from a deep, damaging wound. The elf finally organised his sleep-encrusted mind enough to summon his intuition.

Who amongst the citizens was most likely to be in danger?

Leaping out of bed, opening the airship door and casting down the ladder, he rushed off towards the outskirts of town, trepidation pursuing him with an uncomfortable nearness.

The weighty, insistent raps Sportacus made upon the hatch to Robbie's lair boomed in the night air before fading, unanswered. He repeated the action once more, to no avail.

"Robbie!" He hollered. "RO—"

In the space of less than a second, the hatch door rocketed open, and the poor elf found himself being scorched by a pair of unforgiving grey-green eyes.

"What the hell do YOU want!?"

And then, a very extraordinary thing happened. Seeing Robbie in the flesh prompted the mass of knowledge about the man's life, only a few hours old in Sportacus' view, to be conveyed to him anew. The plump newborn, the distracted toddler and the delicate child of five or six were all there in that indignant, careworn face. A mother's generous love and a father's harsh neglect were etched into the shades of his body language. For Sportacus, Robbie had ceased to be a mere object in space, and had become an event in time. It was as if he had truly seen this curious being for the first time.

"Well?"

The elf realised his mouth was hanging open. He tried to simultaneously close it and explain himself.

Robbie rolled his eyes. Before he could fire any scathing wisecracks at his rival, Sportacus blurted out a response.

"The crystal… my crystal, I mean. It was beeping. And since no-one has seen you around for so long—"

The taller man displayed his right hand, a swathe of band-aids covering his ring finger.

"Don't worry Sportadork, I think I'm capable of fixing boo-boos."

As Robbie indulged in a sneer, Sportacus absorbed other marks of the villain's aspect. It seemed that he was not at his best. Strands of unkempt hair drooped upon his brow, the characteristic dark circles of sleep deprivation hung under his eyes, and his rumpled clothes were covered in a sort of white, grainy dust. He could also see that the man had lost some weight in the weeks of his absence.

"Are you sure you're alright?" Sportacus queried, reaching out to brush some of the strange residue off of Robbie's shirt.

His hand was frantically swatted at, and Robbie purposefully drew away from the hero.

"For your information, I've been working on my latest project. And I don't appreciate being so rudely interrupted."

Sportacus felt his chagrin arise as his axiety eased. As worn-out and irritated as Robbie was, at least he wasn't in any danger.

"…Sorry."

As Sportacus loped away, already trying to reconsider his crystal's signal, Robbie called out:

"It's a creation that will help me to finally conquer you, Sportatwit!"

His spiteful laughter disappeared underground with him.

For another hour or so, the elf wandered the deserted streets. His crystal still emanated a faint glow, which gradually weakened to nothing as the night wore on.

He shook himself. What exactly had taken place? Had it been a false alarm? The crystal had never led him astray before… perhaps Robbie's 'boo-boo' _had_ been the emergency. After all, he had been called upon for equally low-key scrapes involving the children.

Another possibility prowled about the back of Sportacus' mind. It was not unlikely that a true crisis had taken place, and that he had been far too late in approaching it.

Clueless about what to do, the hero returned to the quiet chamber of his airship, and fought with a discomfited heart as he returned to sleep.

**

_A/N: Come to think of it, by and large this story is just as much about Sportagoof as it is about Robbie. He has to make sense of a lot of things, and ultimately it's his role to drag Robbie into action. In an interview, Magnus said the series was really about the middle ground between the two extremes of the hero and villain, rather than siding wholly with one or the other. I love the whole idea of complimentary opposites in a give-and-take exchange, it carries so much truth in it. It's certainly more interesting than the us-vs-them ethos of many other superhero mythologies._

_Oh, listen to me, what typical freakin' arts student psychobabble. __


	4. Chapter Three: Je Meurs D'effroi!

CHAPTER 3

_Je dis que rien ne m'épouvante,_

_Je dis, hélas! que je réponds de moi;_

_Mais j'ai beau faire la vaillante..._

_Au fond du coeur je meurs d'effroi!_

_(translation)_

_I say that nothing can frighten me._

_I say, alas, that I respond to myself;_

_But I play the part of the courgeous one in vain..._

_From the bottom of my heart, I die of fear!_

—Je dis que rien ne m'épouvante

From the opera "Carmen" by Georges Bizet

Stephanie rose from her desk and slowly crossed the classroom floor, trying to block out the staring faces of her classmates. Kids were only ever called out of class for one of two reasons, and because Stephanie had never broken any of the (major) school rules, she instantly began praying for the safety of her loved ones. Her thoughts were not sated when she met up with a pensive Bessie by the school doorway.

"Is Uncle Milford okay?"

The little girl made a valiant attempt at optimism as the silent woman led her through the streets. Soon, they crossed the threshold of Lazytown's tiny police station.

Thankfully, her hopes were fulfilled. She ran into the awaiting arms of her uncle. His usual docile cheerfulness had obviously been ravaged by something, but at least he was still in one piece.

"Something bad has happened, Stephanie."

She looked up at the nearby Sportacus, who shared Milford's manner of suspended dread. The elf had his arms crossed and was leaning against a mahogany desk. Sitting at this desk was the face of Lazytown's finest, Officer Lolli.

Stephanie was unsure why he bore this title. She guessed it may have been his actual name, but the lore imparted by other children in Lazytown claimed it was because of the man's rotund physique (not to mention the generous amount of British boiled sweets he always carried around with him, even while on patrol).

"As of 10.37 a. m. this morning, your great-uncle Murgatroid has been reported missing," the officer rattled off systematically.

This gave the young girl reason for pause. She had a beloved Aunt Susie in the city, a mess of second or third cousins elsewhere in town, and there had been mention of distant relatives in Australia. But to Stephanie's current knowledge, that was the total extent of her living family members beyond the Meanswell residence. This had been the first ever mention of a great-uncle Murgatroid.

"He's on your mother's side. That is to say, I'm his nephew," Milford explained. "He lives alone on the South side of town, and I go to visit him every Thursday morning. When I called upon him today, the poor fellow was nowhere to be found."

The Mayor then cast his gaze expectantly to Sportacus, whose own gaze shifted down to his booted feet.

"Late last night, my crystal beeped," he confessed, "but I couldn't find the source of the emergency."

Stephanie felt a surge of sympathy for her friend. Sportacus had a strong, fundamental sense of duty to his role, and having his precious crystal let him down must have been a hard blow to take.

"Maybe it wasn't that bad of an incident," she asserted. "Maybe great-uncle Murgatroid is perfectly alright now."

Officer Lolli flipped open a notebook lying before him. Without looking up at the others, he said:

"I interviewed the missing individual's neighbours, and I ascertained from their statements that his last known whereabouts were in the breaking and entering of the house next door to his own." He ended this with a disapproving cough.

"Next door?" Stephanie repeated.

"That would be Deverhill Manor," Bessie replied.

A silence filled the air. Everyone present seemed to grasp some kind of sinister implication from this.

"Well…" Stephanie piped up, "we should go and search it, shouldn't we? He could still be in that horrible old house!"

"I'm afraid it's not that simple," Lolli stated. "Not only is said property a safety hazard, run-down from years of neglect, but we will have to notify the owner in order to conduct a proper investigation."

He flipped through a few more pages in his notebook. "The record shows the premises to be in the name of Mr. Robert Rotten."

**

The vile, ringing sound of someone persistently thumping on the steel hatch door filtered down into the lair once again. Robbie awoke, and could feel the vein in his left temple start to throb angrily. What did the elf want now?

Robbie had felt so thrown off after the interruption from the previous night, that the moment Sportacus left, he clambered back down into his lair and went straight to sleep. He had been working on his latest opus for nearly forty hours straight, and the break in concentration had returned him to reality. Every joint was stiff and sore, and his usually hyperactive mind was sluggish, spent and screaming out for rest.

Ah, but it would ultimately be time well spent. It was a grand heavy object, requiring some of the finest handiwork Robbie had ever executed. Long had been the nights on which he had grieved over his dismal position in this blasted town. The product in creation would finally remove the disheartening complications that had lain in his way for so long. Once it was finished, Robbie would be well primed to finally overcome his chirpy, ever-frustrating foe.

His body craved sugar. As he creakily battled his way onto his feet, he mentally composed a lecture to growl at Sportacreep about parting a poor villain from his precious nourishment.

"Do you have _any_ idea what—"

"Hi."

Robbie blinked the glare of daylight away. Surrounding him was a whole semicircle of townies. Milford was waving a feeble hand in greeting. Robbie noticed he was flanked by not only Sportagoof, but Officer Lolli. He barked out a short, thorny laugh.

"If it isn't the boys in blue," he teased.

A nightstick abruptly met the bottom of his long chin.

"You watch your tone, Rotten. You're dealing with men of authority."

"Whatsa matter, Lolli? Finally sick of letting the elf do your job for you? Law enforcement requires more than just threats to civilians, you know."

Lolli turned a colour similar to that of the villain's attire. Before any bridges were burned, Sportacus stepped in.

"Robbie, the Mayor's uncle has disappeared in your father's house. We need to investigate."

The mention of Deverhill Manor seemed to have an effect on Robbie that was tenfold of what it had done to the others. He had flinched at Sportacus' statement, and was now staring at him as if he had just slapped the man in the face.

After a few strained seconds: "Nonsense. The place has been empty for fifteen years."

"But the neighbours _saw_ great-uncle Murgatroid go in there!"

Robbie looked down, regarding Stephanie for the first time. She was wearing a watery, puppy-dog expression, one that was a favourite posture of hers in times of difficulty.

He drew in a breath, turning slowly back to the elf.

"And what if I refuse you entry?"

"We'll break in by force, under my search warrant," Lolli answered curtly. "You're beaten, punk." (Milford winced at Lolli's strong language.)

At long last, Robbie's shoulders drooped in a show of defeat.

"I've got the keys. I won't have your brute hands breaking my padlock. I'll come along to supervise, if I must."

**

By the time the group had arrived outside the derelict house, it was afternoon. The sun was still floating high above the horizon, but little of its light was able to infiltrate the sprawling garden.

Robbie produced a cluster of old keys, struggling with them in the rusty padlocks that hung upon the iron gate. As the others milled about, waiting for access, Sportacus noticed the demeanour which had taken hold of the man. His lips were pursed tight, as if he were afraid to say anything. His usually lively, liquid features had been set in a rigid frown. It sunk in for the elf that asking Robbie to come here was a much bigger favour than it seemed. If anything, he had probably done his best to forget that this place even existed.

"Come on," he muttered sternly, finally swinging open the gates. They gave out an ear-splitting shriek, cutting down trendrils of weeds in their path.

A string of flashlights were switched on as the group plunged into the murk, treading along carefully in a single file.

"Keep your eyes peeled," Lolli advised redundantly.

A rustle came from the undergrowth, and Stephanie trod boldly towards it, shining her flashlight on the offending section of ground.

"Stay with me, Stephanie," Sportacus instructed, placing his arm on the child's shoulder as a frighted skink scurried out from under the leaves.

Robbie grappled with the lock on the grand front door for a good five minutes. The more robust men in the party decided to break it down with a nearby log, and the rotted oak panels gave way like wet cardboard.

The first few minutes inside were spent simply absorbing the dust-caked surroundings, little pools of torchlight passing slowly over peeling wallpaper and heavy antique furniture laced with cobwebs. Eventually, Milford rallied enough nerve to break the dreamlike silence.

"We should start moving through this floor, perhaps."

They shuffled along the hallway, Lolli leading them towards the doorway of what looked like the formal lounge. A few pale strings of plant-life poked through cracks in the wall and the patchy carpet, and Milford gave a sudden yelp as he tripped upon one.

For some reason, this shook Sportacus to the core. It wasn't just the suddeness of the noise— as the Mayor's foot had made contact with the trailing stem, it had felt as if the entire house had tremored in reaction. He looked upon the faces of his companions. No-one else had noticed.

Before he passed into the next room, he looked back towards the front door. Robbie was still standing there, unheeding of the others. His gaze was blank and directionless. The hero wanted to beckon to him, but the weight of the atmosphere was too much.

He passed into the formal lounge, reminding himself to breathe.

"Uncle Murgatroid?"

Milford's call heralded no echo.

Stephanie had found the piano that Sportacus had examined the night before. Her little hand hovered in the air, and Sportacus recognised the temptation to touch the beautiful item.

"Uncle Murgatroid?"

Milford slowly began to progress into the next room along, which was enveloped by even deeper darkness. He stepped solidly upon its creaky threshold. A strangled cry reached them from the other side of the house.

Everyone's heads instantly snapped up like rabbits detecting a prowling wolf. Someone inhaled a slow, ragged breath.

"You'd… you'd better come here," Robbie called to them, his voice shaky.

With a diffident pace, Sportacus advanced back out into the hallway, following the direction Robbie's voice had come from. After about a minute of searching, the elf found him backed against a the frame of another doorway. He had clamped a hand over his ashen face, distressed eyes concentrated on the ceiling.

"What…"

Sportacus looked up as well, but there was nothing to observe other than a few large patches of mould. He heard the footsteps of the others approaching behind him.

Stephanie's terrified scream alerted Sportacus to the dead body lying upon the floor.

The wide, glazed, lifeless eyes of Murgatroid Meanswell were also staring up at the ceiling.

**

_A/N: Ohnoes, a corpse in Lazytown. D: _

_Th character of Officer Lolli is from the Latabær plays. Here I've interpreted him as being truly unpleasant and authoritative, the Lazytown equivalent of Douglas Adams' Vogons. Obviously Stephanie will be quite prominent from here on in, we will be learning about HER family too at points throughout the story._


	5. Four: Is There Not One Maiden Breast?

CHAPTER 4

_Oh, is there not one maiden breast_

_Which does not feel the moral beauty_

_Of making worldly interest_

_Subordinate to sense of duty?_

—Oh, is there not one maiden breast

From the opera "Pirates of Penzance" by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

It was early March. As the days grew warmer and the year's first flower buds sprouted amongst fresh young leaves, Lazytown became darker and colder. The docile community, embedded safely amongst verdant, green dairy country, had never endured much in the way of evil. Mild misdemeanors composed the majority of records in Officer Lolli's books, ones easily forgiven and forgotten. The town's small population prided itself on its honourable reputation and sense of civil obedience.

Little wonder then, why Deverhill Manor was regarded with such profound fear. After the arrest and exposure of the Doctor, only the robust skeptic Murgatroid Meanswell was daring enough to have remained living next door to the place. Now, both houses on each side lay empty. The unfortunate influence of this blight on the townscape reached well beyond its high stone fences. Long after its heartbroken old master had gone, the ghost of his cruel misery remained. His troublesome, maladjusted son was viewed by many as his final revenge on the citizens.

Ziggy swung his legs as he sat on the uncomfortable café stool, making a face at his plate of artichoke quiche. It seemed Stingy, sitting opposite him, did not share his distate, and was digging into his own slice heartily.

"Are you gonna eat that, Ziggy?"

"Don't be greedy, Stirling, dearest!" An oval-faced woman in pearls bellowed at the boy. 'Stirling' shrunk in his chair with a feeble apology. It was so hard to make things his own when Mumsie was leering down at him.

The woman pursed her lips, turning her attention back to Ziggy's mother. "And to think that dreadful house is only a short distance down the street from _mine!_ I tell you," she declared, "I would be tremendously surprised if the Rotten boy wasn't at least secondarily involved in this whole ghastly affair."

The blonde woman's soft features knotted in a troubled frown. "Oh, Cordelia, you aren't suggesting that Robbie actually _killed_ Mr. Meanswell, are you?"

The two boys sitting at the table shared a panicked glance.

Pixel's mother scoffed from behind her laptop. "Yeah, sure, hon. Rotten couldn't organise himself enough to stomp on a bug, much less commit an actual, bonafide crime."

Trixie's mother— a tall woman in a crisp pantsuit— spoke up, and everyone jumped at the thundering terror that was her voice.

"OH, so burying the town square in junk food and locking our children up in boltholes is NOTHING, is it?"

Ziggy's mother struggled to find a rebuttal to this. "W-well…"

Pixel's mother effortlessly came to her aid. "If I remember corectly, Winnie, you planned a similar prank involving beer empties and our teachers on the night of our high school graduation party."

Trixie's mother twitched slightly. "That was different," she alleged. "I was just a kid, doing it for fun."

"That's not what Principal Níski thought."

Ziggy's mother, now feeling more buoyed, joined the defense. "Who's to say that Robbie doesn't do it for fun as well? Has anyone ever seen someone get _hurt_ by him?"

An odd cry escaped from Stingy's mother, akin to some manner of rodent defending its nest. "I don't believe I'm hearing this. After all the terrible things he's done to _our_ families, you would so easily dismiss the danger he poses?"

"Sportacus takes care of him," Pixel's mother replied flatly. "If Rotten was going to do something truly horrible, he would have done it by now."

"Exactly my point! That body was found in his father's house! Bessie dear, surely _you_ agree with me."

From across the table, Bessie simpered doubtfully.

"Well…" she began, waiting for an answer to crystallise in her mind. "He's no model citizen, but… You should take into consideration that—"

"Good afternoon, ladies."

Approaching the table was Milford, or at least a sad imitation of the usually cheery gentleman. In place of his favourite sunshine-yellow garments was a sober black suit. Stephanie, dragging her feet behind him, was dressed in an equally dull woollen tunic.

"How was the wake?"

Milford didn't reply, but sank down into an empty chair and ordered a strong coffee. Bessie quickly rallied round with a gentle arm across his shoulders.

"Can us and Stephanie go outside and play?" Ziggy asked, yearning to be freed from the vortex of unhappy vibes.

"Of course, darling. I'll put your quiche in a doggy bag for you."

**

After a quick search, the three children found their other playmates in a sunny area of the park. Without looking at anyone else, Stephanie headed straight for the fraternal comfort of Sportacus' arms.

"Are you okay?" The elf asked softly after an adequatley lengthy hug.

She nodded legtharically, her red-rimmed eyes still not meeting with those of her companions.

"Why are you feeling so sad?" Trixie blurted out. "It's not like you knew your great-uncle that well."

The pink-haired girl clung to Sportacus' arm.

"Don't you see?" She responded, sniffling. "I never knew him at all. He was part of my family, and he was gone before I even got the chance to meet him. He's…" the girl began to hiccough. "They're not even sure what got him… Officer Lolli said he might have been… poisoned…" She shuddered, pressing her tear-stained face into Sportacus' vest.

Ziggy was staring at the ground.

"The grown-ups are saying that Robbie killed him," he announced in a low voice.

Almost violently, Stephanie tore herself from Sportacus' embrace. Ziggy backed away a little when her indignant glare hit him.

"What!? That's _ridiculous!_"

"You have to admit, they kinda have a point," Stingy remarked with a delicate tone. "Robbie's done a lot of bad stuff."

"Yeah," Trixie declared. "Like breaking into people's homes, and trapping them in places…"

Sportacus shook his head calmly. "There's no way it could have been Robbie, guys. He was with us when we searched the house."

"You never know," Stingy insisted, "he might have been putting on a big act that day—"

"STOP IT, JUST STOP IT, ALL OF YOU!" Stephanie's tears were freely gushing again. It had been a trying week, and the usually considerate girl was at the end of her tether. The most uneasy of silences stunted the group as she once more interred her sobs in the elf's already well-soaked vest.

Looking down at the quivering, traumatised youngster, Sportacus sighed. There had been enough pain aleady, for every soul concerned.

"Listen," he said with a gentle yet firm authority, "Robbie doesn't deserve to be blamed. There's no proof. If anything, I think you should all try and be nice to him. Or even just be more patient with him."

The childrens' fervent attention on him was almost uncomfortable. He could feel their dismayed shock at being told to indulge the local hoodlum. After all, how on earth were they to know about Robbie's past?

"He's… I think he does all that stuff because he is very unhappy. He's not lucky enough to have the good friends and loving family that we all do. Think about how lonely he must feel."

Stephanie's weeping had died down, and she too was now staring at Sportacus. Slowly, the hero could see a heavy sort of comprehension register in each child's expression.

Ziggy chanced to open his mouth. "Um…"

Sportacus smiled kindly at the little boy, encouraging him to express his thoughts.

"Mummy says that bullies are only mean 'cause they don't like themselves."

Sportacus gave a solemn nod in agreement. "It's very sad, but that's the truth."

**

Milford stared down at the fine grain of his wooden desk, the little spotlight from his banker's lamp causing its polished veneer to gleam softly in the dim, quiet office.

"What to do?" He murmured. "There's an unknown danger in that house that threatens my people… How many others might die? I don't even know where to start."

"Remember how we dealt with it last time? Calling in the state emergency services?" Lolli suggested, leaning over the Mayor. "We bagged the scum of this town before, and we could do it again."

Sportacus, who had been staring out at the evening sky, frowned at the two other men.

"But we don't know what we're dealing with this time. What if the authorities aren't what we need?"

Milford let out a groan rattling with weariness and sorrow. "If only… I suppose there is no way we can approach this with any more information. The man responsible for the threat lurking in Deverhill Manor is long gone."

Leaving the windowsill, the elf approached the desk, purposefully catching the eye of both the policeman and the politician.

"There may be someone who can at least give us a helping hand."

Milford's eyebrows raised.

"I think," Sportacus told him, "it's time to call in my father."

**

_A/N: Woot, Number 9. The inspiration for his depiction in this story comes from Shinju's awesome art here: __.com/_

_Also, mums. :P I christened Stingy's and Trixie's mothers 'Cordelia' and 'Winnie' respectively, and I would hate to be trapped in a lift with the both of them. I picture Trixie as having a huge mess of older sisters and a really tense relationship with her mum because she won't act ladylike as they do. Ziggy's mum is pretty well formed in my head too, she'd be the young, tender-hearted one in the group, like her son. I (reflexively) came up with a little backstory about her being one of Robbie's classmates. She was nice to him and they almost became pals, but her gaggle of girlfriends influenced her not to hang out with him. And now she still harbours guilt about it. D'aawwww. :( _


	6. Five: Vedi? È venuto!

CHAPTER 5

_Un bel dì, vedremo_

_levarsi un fil di fumo _

_sull'estremo confin del mare._

_E poi la nave appare._

_Poi la nave bianca_

_entra nel porto, romba il suo saluto._

_Vedi? È venuto!_

_(translation)_

_One fine day we'll notice_

_A thread of smoke arising on the sea _

_In the far horizon._

_And then the ship appears;_

_Then the trim white vessel_

_Glides into the harbour, and thunders forth her cannon._

_You see? He has come!_

—Un Bel Dì

From the opera "Madama Butterfly" by Giacomo Puccini

Arranged side-by-side in pretty rainbow flanks, Ziggy examined his collection of sweets. They were to remain upon his bedside table today, uneaten.

Instead, the little boy rushed into the kitchen and started sifting through the large fruit bowl sitting upon the breakfast table. After a few moments, he extracted the biggest, brightest, crispiest Granny Smith he could find. Rushing over to the sink, he washed it thoroughly (his mother sighing as jets of water richoceted off the fruit onto her clean countertop), and polished it with a cheerful yellow tea-towel until it squeaked.

This would be the most perfect welcoming gift ever.

He had been with Mummy when they had bought the apple, along with its friends, at the Lazytown supermarket. It was a wholly unglamourous experience, flavoured by bland music piped from the store's speakers and the trademark off-white of supermarket décor. It was nothing like the succulent joys of the small local candy store, with its packed shelves of lollipops and chocolate bonbons, bursting with colour, fragrance and the delighted squeals of other children. Before Sportacus had come along, this was all Ziggy had been able to see.

The little boy recalled the first time he had plunged his hands into the rich, dark soil of the community garden. It was a cherished memory— not only because of the fresh air and good company, but because it had been the first time when he had truly absorbed Sportacus' words. Things had an inner existence. The apple in his hands did not boast a plain supermarket shelf as its habitat: it was a living thing that had beed created by sun, rain and earth: things whose beauty and power awed Ziggy in their scope. He was aware that these magical elements were still well beyond his juvenile understanding. But the processed, super-sugary sweets in his bedroom, no matter how tasty they were, had started out as goo in a grey, noisy factory. Any natural qualities had been long lost in the angry clank and grind of machinery. There was no beauty in such an origin, at least as far as he could see.

It was as if his hero had come from a whole different world, one more enchanted and powerful than the insulated small town community. And as warm and open as Sportacus had always been, it felt as if there was always a field of mystique surrounding him. When Stephanie's uncle had told the children about the tantalising 'island in the North Sea', Ziggy had ached to know more. (Mummy had shown him a chart of the island in an atlas, but all the spidery squiggles and unpronounceable place-names did not hold the six-year-old's imagination much).

When it was announced that Sportacus' father was going to visit, he could barely contain himself.

"Come on come on come on let's go let's go!"

His mother sighed.

"It's only seven-thirty, dearest, he's not due for another hour yet."

Unheeding of his mother's words, Ziggy clambered up onto the couch in the living room to get a good view of the town square. Officer Lolli was already pacing about in wide circles, twirling his nightstick.

Someone else was up and about. A huge pair of magenta binoculars, perched beneath a bubblegum-pink bob, was concentrated on the pale morning sky. Ziggy flung open the window and squirmed his way out, ignoring the censure of his mother.

"Hey, STEPHANIE!"

She smiled as the boy ran up to her.

"No sign of him yet," she reported. Ziggy was not the only one impatient to meet him.

He held up the Granny Smith. "Look what I've got for him," he announced proudly.

Stephanie beamed. "He'll like that."

"And it's better than a lollipop," the boy added emphatically.

As the next hour passed, clumps of people began to settle themselves outside Town Hall, yammering away to each other with self-possessed anticipation. The township's morale was in need of a boost, and it seemed the people had agreed to treat this morning as a celebration. He was a longtime, sadly missed friend to the town. Along with the feeling of merriment, there was a highly-strung expectation that Sportacus' father would slip into the role of hero and problem-solver, effortlessly sweeping away the looming menace which had already taken a life. There had been warnings from some quarters that the old elf may not have had the capability for this. Sportacus himself ignored his own doubts, reassuring the townspeople of his father's expertise. At any rate, a wiseman from an exotic realm would at least provide a fresh perspective for the whole mess.

Trixie gawked at her brightly-coloured wristwatch. "It's eight-thirty! He'll be here any minute!"

The children had perched themselves on a wooden bench near a cluster of trees. The square was, by now, packed with what must have been every person in town, as well as families from the outlying dairy farms. Amongst the tumult, a striped blue hat could be seen rushing about with a nervous pace, trying to cool the warming atmosphere. The impatient excitement had aroused some tempers, and the last thing the elf wanted his parent and mentor to see was a township coming to blows.

One by one, faces turned to the sky above. The noise died down, and the minutes ticked agonisingly away. A tense hush slowly subdued everyone.

Ziggy reached for the Granny Smith he had set lovingly upon the bench's armrest, eager to have it ready to bequeath.

He let out a little cry of muted panic when he saw that it had gone. As the others remained still, waiting, the little boy clambered down from the bench and began scouring the grass for his treasure. The sun was still low in the sky, and it was hard to make out much in the shade of the trees. His short fingers fumbled about clumsily.

He started. Something fell from above, striking him square on his crown.

It bounced carelessly onto the soft grass, into Ziggy's line of sight. It was an ex-Granny Smith apple, its white flesh stripped to the core.

Before he could react, some great beast swooped down out of the trees with a powerful whoosh. It lighted nimbly upon the ground, and Ziggy found himself staring at a pair of booted feet.

"Thank you very much for the gift, young man, it made a superb breakfast!"

There were sounds of gushing coming from the square, but Ziggy was transfixed by the figure standing before him.

Though clearly in the Autumn of his life, everything about this elf-man suggested Springtime. The smile lines engraved upon his face, the wholesome glow of his cheek, and the sprightly body language that Ziggy had only ever seen in one other person. His moustache, bushy and full, was a vivid chestnut, flecked with grey. His old-world attire was likewise— a mix of saffron, silver and many shades of brown. The little boy thought it gave him the appearance of a clever old fox. Half wreathed in shadow, his eyes glinting, there was something not quite real about him, like a watercolour out of an aged storybook. It was absolutely wonderful.

Ziggy now noticed the insignia on his leather breastplate: a bright red, calligraphic number nine.

"You're…" he breathed.

The elf-man raised an eyebrow, then let rip with a deep, delighted laugh. He held a hand out to the boy, helping him to his feet.

"Now, let me repay the kind gesture, dear boy!" With bafflingly swift sleight of hand, he produced a delectably crisp-looking red apple and placed it gently in Ziggy's hands.

"Thank you," he said in a small, dumbfounded voice.

"Number Nine!" Someone called out.

The elf-man stepped into the sunshine, greeting the throng, and his praises began to be sung. The children gaped at the scene— the parents and authority figures of Lazytown had gathered around him like giddy, frolicsome puppies. Adults in business suits ran up to hug him with beatific, ear-to-ear grins. Everyone between the ages of twenty-five and forty had thrown off reserve in place of an almost infantile idolatry. Nicotine stains, love handles and receding hairlines were forgotten in a haze of nostalgic rapture.

"Why are they acting like that?" Stingy wondered out loud.

"Isn't it obvious?" Stephanie replied. "Number Nine was the grown ups' own Sportacus."

Milford paced down from the Town Hall steps evenly, head held high as he approached the old hero. As their eyes met, they regarded each other with gentlemanly decorum.

This pretense was very quickly cast off.

"Milford, you old dog!" They embraced like brothers.

"Oh, Níu, I can't tell you how happy I am to see you again. But we were expecting to see you descend from the sky. Where is—"

"—Brynhildur? Oh, she's just a little shy this morning."

Níu briskly turned around, put his fingers to his mouth and gave a sharp, beckoning whistle. From behind a large, fluffy cumulonimbus, an extraordinary vessel sailed into view. Unlike the other sleek blue airship floating above the town, she had the same distinct old-world aura as her captain. Rounder, larger and decidedly more organic, she boasted an elegantly curved wooden body which resembled that of a galleon. This was held aloft by an elaborately rigged silk balloon of three massive compartments.

Milford chuckled. "I see the old girl's still sky-worthy."

"Old elf technology," Níu murmured. "We build things to last. Now, what's all this business I hear about the Doctor's house?"

In instant response, Níu felt a gentle tug on the side of his baggy trousers.

"Excuse me? Mr Sportacus' daddy, sir?"

"Ah! The little apple-bearer!" Níu exclaimed.

"My name is Ziggy, sir."

"A very fine name, indeed. You may call me 'Níu'."

Ziggy smiled shyly. "That's an interesting name."

"Ha, I'm sure you've never known anyone else with such a title."

The boy shook his head.

"My other title is 'Íþróttaálfurinn'," Níu stated.

Ziggy'seyes goggled. "I hope I don't have to call you that."

Níu laughed again, the same joyful, deep laugh as before. "I like you already, Ziggy!"

The smile that blossomed on the child's face momentarily blocked out the morning sun.

The two looked up to see a zippy blue blur scoring an uneven path through the crowd. It came to rest by their side.

"Sorry sorry sorry…" Sportacus babbled, "A cat got stuck up a tall tree the moment you appeared!"

Níu's face suddenly darkened. "Whelp," he declared, giving the younger elf a light clip on the head. "That's the same excuse you employed as a lad when you would come home late. How daft do you think your old father is?"

"But, Pabbi…"

A round of high giggles chimed out from the bottom of the steps. As the other citizens began to mill about and wander back through the town, the children had approached. To their view, Sportacus being scolded was an irregular— and therefore hilarious— phenomenon.

"You think I could come here and not expect a warm welcome from my own son?"

The cringe on Sportacus' brow deepened, his usual confident bearing humbled. "I…"

"Oh, come here, boy."

The next thing he knew, the superhero was being crushed by an impassioned bear hug. "I've missed you so much."

"I've missed you too, Pabbi."

Níu finally released him, clamping his hands on the younger elf's shoulders. "Don't think we haven't heard about your exploits. Milford's been raving about your good influence in his letters. Your mother wanted me to tell you how proud she is."

"She's not here?"

Níu shook his head. "She wanted to come, but last week, Ari's two girls decided it would be fun to play with fireworks inside the school hall. Your mother has to hold her classes beside the large mossy hillock until it's rebuilt."

"Your mother is a teacher, Sportacus?"

Stephanie's eyes were sparkling, gazing up at both of the elves with sheer admiration.

Níu grinned down at the girl. "Ah, you must be Stephanie."

She bounced a little on her toes. "Yeah, that's me, Mister Níu," she replied in a fluttery voice.

He knelt down slightly to meet her eye level. "You know, my dear, that boy of mine always hassled me for a little sister to play with. From the way your uncle describes the two of you, I'd say his wish has come true."

Stephanie batted her eyes heavily as a blush clouded her cheeks.

Sportacus cleared his throat. "What about Percy and Odie, Pabbi?"

"Oh, they're just fine. They wish you as well as you can be, but they're both busy with their own daring deeds."

"Who are Percy and Odie?" Ziggy asked.

"They're my older brothers," Sportacus informed him. "I wish you guys could have met them today," he sighed.

"Wow, Sportacus, your family all have such funny names," Trixie remarked, and the group laughed.

Níu explained. "The wedding present I gave my wife was a beautiful, leather-bound book of stories from Ancient Greece, which I picked up on my journeys through the Mediterranean. She loved it so much, she named our boys after her three favourite heroes. Percy and Odie are short for 'Perseus' and 'Odysseus', respectively."

"And Sportacus?" Stephanie asked.

"Named 'Spartacus' at birth, after the liberator of the Roman slaves," he replied.

'Spartacus' made a face at this.

"But the little fellow would never sit still. Always jumping around or playing with a ball, and the nickname his brothers gave him stuck."

"It's way better than 'Spartacus'," Sportacus muttered.

Another peal of laughter tore through the group. All the children shared a jolt of delight at the concept that their hero was also a son and a little brother. For some reason, this revelation had not lessened their respect for him. If anything, it had reinforced their bond, the connection that denoted he was one of their own.

Milford unobtrusively slipped back into his office as the two elves and brood of young ones took off to the sports park. It had been a while since spirits had been so high— Níu's return had been just the burst of brightness that the Mayor had hoped for. His little niece certainly hadn't smiled so much since Murgatroid's death.

The unpleasant business of Deverhill Manor, Milford decided, could wait until tomorrow.

**

"Kick it to me! Kick it to me, Mister Níu!"

A carefully aimed football zoomed across the ground into Stingy's clutches. He dribbled it up the midfield, until he was level with the goal.

"Bend it like Beckham, Stingy!" Trixie called out.

Taking aim, the boy slammed a yellow trainer into the ball, sending it flying. It would have easily scored, if it hadn't knocked the unfocused goalkeeper square in the back of the head, flying back out towards the halfway line.

"Woooh!" Stephanie raised clenched fists to the heavens in triumph. "Good save, Sportacus!"

"Huh?"

Níu let out a huff of a sigh. "What's with you, boy?"

As the children rushed over to the benches for a breather, the older elf cornered the younger.

"Alright, out with it."

"Out with what?" Sportacus frowned at him.

"_Nothing_ distracts you from football but something really serious. And you're so rarely capable of 'serious'."

After a few moments, a hangdog smirk registered on his face.

"My crystal," he answered. "It beeped on the night before we found the Mayor's uncle, and for some reason it didn't lead me to him."

Níu nodded in understanding. "Yes… yes. Old Murgatroid. Poor jackass. I suspect Ignatius left something nasty in his house that the authorities never found. I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it in time."

Níu stared up at the hill where the manor stood, becoming lost in his own musings. Sportacus' impatience spurred him on.

"Why couldn't I help him, Pabbi?"

He continued staring at the hill, and drew breath to speak.

"You know the real tragedy about Murgatroid Meanswell? He was a loner through and through. Even in his youth. Far too rational, I'd say. Only saw the world in terms of objects, instead of the relational spaces between. I'm quite sure dear Milford was the only company he ever welcomed. Even his grand-niece— big-hearted, inquisitive little thing she is— was ignorant of his existence."

Níu fell silent again. Sportacus itched for an explanation to all of this.

"This is not a pleasant question, Sportacus… How many people in the world do you think are suffering right now?"

Sportacus shook his head reflexively. "I don't know… lots?"

"'Lots' would be right. And why isn't your crystal beeping for them?"

Sportacus could not answer this.

"Because you do not know those people. You may wish happiness upon strangers, but you cannot take them into your heart, you cannot love them. Murgatroid was a stranger to you, through no fault of your own."

Sportacus looked into his father's eyes, a weighty notion being shared between them.

"Isolation is a devastating poison, and too often, self-inflicted. It is a terrible crime to cut oneself off from the pulse of the world like that, to be alone."

Sportacus took a deep breath, allowing himself to absorb these words.

He balked a little when his father's face split into a wide smile.

"Well, I never!"

Sportacus looked over his shoulder. Níu's gaze was concentrated on a corner of a nearby wall, where the younger elf just made out a sliver of dark purple darting quickly behind the canary-coloured stucco.

The old elf bounded over to the wall, discovering a rather terrified villain cowering behind it.

"If it isn't little Robbie Deverhill!"

Too scared to run, the stooped-over man could only scowl at the outdated surname he was adressed with.

"I would have thought you'd be long gone from Lazytown by now, off to seek fame and fortune with those formidable talents of yours. What's keeping you in this little town?"

Robbie looked from one stupidly cheerful elf to the other, too struck with dismay to craft a good comeback.

"It's Rotten, now," he said finally, with as much spite as he could muster.

"Pardon me?" Níu queried.

"I'm Robbie ROTTEN, old man. There was no way I was keeping _his_ foul name."

"He's as rotten as they come!" Trixie blurted out from behind the three men. Eager to resume the game, the children had scuttled over to join the elves.

"Pabbi, Robbie has taken the post of local villain," Sportacus explained in a subdued manner.

Disappointment splashed across Níu's face. "Oh, Robbie," he groaned, a descending cadence to his voice. "I had surely thought you would have risen above such vice by now."

The tall man's lip twitched, anger escalating. He finally came up with an insult.

Níu frowned deeply at the expletive, and it almost caused Sportacus to faint. Though it was obviously an Icelandic term, it certainly _sounded_ pretty horrid to the children.

"Yes, well, I can see _that_ hasn't changed," the older elf tutted.

Ziggy wanted to back away from the irate figure, but something sparked in the back of his mind. He tentatively stepped toward the man and tried to catch his eye.

"Um, Robbie?"

The villain desperatley wanted to be elsewhere. "_What?_"

Rallying his courage, Ziggy produced the crisp red apple Níu had given him and held it out.

"Y-you can have this, if it will make you feel better."

Thorough revulsion was hurled his way.

"What are you trying to do, you little brat? _Poison_ me?"

He thrust himself to his feet, curtly turning his back on the boy. "You can keep that disgusting thing."

As he stomped off, Ziggy's wobbling lip gave way to a deluge of tears, at which his friends quickly came to his aid.

"Oh, Ziggy, don't worry about what he said," Stephanie cooed, patting the boy's back gently.

"Yeah, he's just a stupid crook, anyway," Stingy testified.

As the others eased the blonde child's distress, Sportacus watched the escaping form of Robbie with unerring concern.

"Should I go talk to him?" Sportacus asked his father.

Níu held up a halting hand, his own eyes set upon the children. He watched silently as Stephanie insisted Ziggy enjoy the apple he was so willing to share. They sat in a ring on the grass, all fawning over the smallest member of their group.

"I really think I should—"

"It'll just make it worse," Níu insisted.

The older elf's impassiveness seemed to fuel his son's fidgeting all the more.

He adressed Sportacus without looking up. "The bond between the elf and the human child is a strong one."

"I know, Pabbi." He rolled his eyes, dismissive of what he saw as a redundant statement.

Níu continued. "They understand and appreciate our people on a level that most human adults cannot. So often do they become our playmates and friends, and so often do we become their protectors."

Sportacus examined his father's face. His usual puckish smile was there, but somehow it didn't seem as lively. His vivid blue eyes had dimmed a little as he watched the children's attempts to cheer Ziggy up.

"A child abused, neglected, lost or lonely is an intolerable offense to an elf. The worst offense."

Anxiousness stilled Sportacus' fidgeting.

"Pabbi?"

A long silence went by. Níu watched a band of fat, grey storm clouds behind his son's head sail slowly past.

"I should have been aware. I should have _made_ myself aware. He was not going to just settle down as he grew older. But I chalked all those bruises up to the fights he'd always get into. I was too much of a coward to dwell on the alternative answer."

The younger elf was burning with questions, but waited for his father to speak again.

"I tried, at first, it's not like I didn't try. But I gave up on him too soon. That is even more of a betrayal. No child should be denied the patience of their guardians. I made time for every child in Lazytown but him."

His words began to make sense. "Robbie."

Níu had closed his eyes, sinking into his memories. "There's no excuse. Much of the fault lies with me. To think that after his daily scolding for graffiti and curse words, I always readily dumped him back into that lion's den. And when the Doctor was arrested, it was only for the trespasses he'd made in his research! He was never charged for those years of abuse... I'm sure feeling invisible was even harder for Robbie to tolerate than being frowned upon. He has a right to scorn me."

"But it wasn't your fault at all, Pabbi!" Sportacus cried.

Níu shook his head. A sad kind of heat entered his voice as he spoke next. "There's no use rewriting the past, boy. What's done is done, and we all have to bear the consequences. Robbie is the greatest single regret of my life. He is not the child that I couldn't save. He is the child that I could have saved, had I not insisted on my delusions so."

A chilly North wind rustled the trees. The two elves slowly turned their attention back towards the brood of children lolling about on the grass.

"They are precious. Don't make the same mistake I did, Sportacus."

Sportacus displayed a rare moment of reverence. "I'll try my best not to, Pabbi."

**

_A/N: Yay Nine. Plenty of backstory. A lot of the information given in this story is in retrospect, I noticed. It has a lot to do with family history, I guess. :P_


	7. Six: It's True That He Has Gone Astray

CHAPTER SIX

_It's true that he has gone astray, but pray_

_Is that a reason good and true why you_

_Should all be deaf to pity's name?_

_For shame, for shame, for shame!_

—Oh, is there not one maiden breast

From the opera "Pirates of Penzance" by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

Popping another chocolate praline into his mouth, Robbie turned up the speakers on his self-built sound system. The recording was coming to his favourite part of Act I: The string section _pizzicato_'ed as the poor fool Alfredo proclaimed his love for the dazzling Parisian jewel that was Violetta. The tenor portraying him wailed out the lyrics with determined melancholy:

"_Un di, felice, eterea,_

_Mi balenaste innante,_

_E da quel dì tremante_

_Vissi d'ignoto amor!"_

Under his breath, the villain absently sang along. He continued watching Sportaflop through the periscope as he leapt and sprinted through the streets above.

It was a dangerous time for Robbie. He'd promised himself to keep a distance from those infernal elves, and any plan of theirs to blow up, gut out or knock down his father's manor. But he couldn't help himself. There was no harm in just watching, was there?

Sportacus lighted upon the pavement outside Town Hall, and, gazelle-like, pranced up the steps and through the front door.

The onlooker interrupted his crooning of the beautiful romanza to curse roughly. After a few minutes of readjusting his position, swivelling the periscope and general struggling, he managed to aim his view through the window of what he knew was Milford's office.

The sports elf had beaten him there. Also in the room were Níu, Officer Lolli and the Mayor himself. With such a concentration of patriarchs and authority figures in one place, Robbie had to resist a shudder of distaste.

He could guess what they were there for.

"Hmm, yes. Well then," came Milford's affectations through the periscope's tinny microphone. "While we're waiting on our tea and crackers, let's get a brainstorm going. Can anyone propose a strategy for dealing with this whole fiasco?"

Níu did not hesitate. "Simple," he said. "We search the manor again."

The others looked quite taken aback at this.

"But…what if we get killed?" Lolli posited.

The elf in brown shrugged. "I suppose that risk is there, but it's the only way to uncover what the danger really is."

The policeman shuddered. "The hospital in the city informed us that there seemed to be traces of a poisonous substance in the victim's bloodstream."

Níu nodded. "From what I heard, Ignatius had begun to dabble in biochemistry shortly before he was caught grave-robbing. The lab rats which were seized from the manor all died shortly after. The local police department of the time did not bother to investigate this. But I wouldn't be surprised if those animals died from something other than shock."

"And that substance could still be in the house?" Milford exclaimed.

"We'll find out when we enter it," Níu affirmed.

"Before we do," Lolli announced, getting up from the squishy armchair he had been nestled in, "I say we arrest the Rotten boy and interrogate him for everything we can get."

Robbie started, as both terror of arrest and dislike for Lolli crackled through his frayed nerves. When he put his eyes to the periscope once more, he saw that Sportacus had now commanded the group's attention.

"That's not fair at all. Why do you suspect Robbie so much, Lolli?"

His tone of voice was far from angry. A strong arm resting upon the doorframe and slight crinkle on his bronzed brow, he looked at the officer with a kind of cheerless curiosity.

Lolli huffed, his pompous expression screaming out a scorn for what he saw as Sportacus' total naïveté.

"He's the bane of this community! No better than his father! A dangerous, sadistic madman! Who else could have murdered a harmless old coot like Murgatroid!? We need to get rid of him before he kills again!"

A bleak sensation swept through Robbie, one that drowned out his current anger at the officer. He could picture the people in town whispering to one another, exchanging rumours in the grocery store and shivering with loathing. He could picture these people locking every door and window of their house at night, and warning their children not to go near that strange man in the funny clothes. He pictured them airing their concerns to Officer Lolli, Milford, Sportacus.

His chest became heavy and cold. It was never enjoyable to be reminded of how despised he really was.

"Robbie's not a killer," was Sportacus' calm response.

Lolli sputtered for a few seconds, affronted that his official opinion could be challenged. "And just _how_ do you know this?"

The elf's eyes wandered out past the window, and Robbie prayed that he would not notice the perisope creaking in the bushes.

"You didn't see the look on his face when he found Murgatroid Meanswell's body. I'm sure he is just as scared as the rest of us."

The hero's voice was soft and sad. He was not tersely pushing an opinion, he was expressing something which he felt was completely true.

"There is no real evil in Robbie's bad behaviour. He just feels frustrated and lonely. We all feel like that sometimes, Lolli."

Slowly, the harsh chill gripping the villain's insides began to thaw.

"Besides, this problem is probably more important to him than anyone else. Whatever is in that manor has got to be there because of his father. I think we should ask his permission to search the house, and let him decide what to do about it in the end."

The two elves shared a brief glance. A slight smirk tugged at Níu's mouth.

Lolli fumed silently while Milford pronounced his assent.

"A sound idea. Yes, yes, I'm sure that this is the right course of action. It's settled then. Sportacus, I would like you to approach Mister Rotten the first moment you can and pass on our request."

There was a timid knock at the door. A young public servant entered with a tray carrying a teapot and platter of various crispbreads.

Milford chuckled. "And we've concluded before afternoon tea, at that! Thank you, Mitzi. Would you fellows care to stay and partake?"

The older gentlemen sat down, but Sportacus politely declined. As he galloped out of the building and back onto the streets, Robbie too abandoned his periscope. The clang of running feet on a steel stairwell echoed up through the lair.

"Hey! Robbie!"

Clearing two stucco walls, a zebra crossing and a public bench, Sportacus landed at his side. The villain had to flinch a little.

"You're just the person I was looking for," Sportacus declared cheerily.

"I know."

"What?"

"I mean…" Robbie's lip twitched. "I was looking for you too."

He grimaced when Sportacus stared at him in delighted surprise.

"You _were?_"

"Yeah… well…" He grappled with improvisation. "I… You can tell the Mayor that if he needs to open up my father's house again… you know, to figure out what got his uncle… he, um, can."

The astonishment shining off of Sportacus became almost radioactive. "Wow!" He gave the man a spirited thump on the back. "That's great, Robbie! Thanks for being so helpful."

Shaking off the pain (and swallowing his ire at the prospect of Sportabrute's handiwork leaving an ugly bruise on his poor delicate skin), he managed to right himself.

"But," he barked, "there are some conditions I demand."

The elf assented gladly. "Anything."

"One: I _must_ be present. I don't want you and your chums poking around in there without me. Two: Any breakages must be paid for."

Sportacus was nodding like a bobble-head toy.

"Three…" Robbie's authoritative tone faltered slightly. "I want you to be there as well."

He looked away as he muttered this. In his peripheral vision, he caught the hero's moustache swishing upwards, indicating a smile.

"You're a hyperactive, muscle-headed jock… but I trust _you_ more than that blockhead Mayor, the despot cop and Old Man Nine."

"Okay. It's a deal." There was a laugh in his airy voice.

Robbie squinted, shaking it off. "Anyway, Sportacus," he snarled, staring determinedly back in the direction of his billboard, "I have more important things to do than chinwagging all day."

He flounced away along the footpath as the elf wished him well.

Sportacus smiled again as he watched the man retreating— he always preferred Robbie calling him by his usual name.

**

"I want to come!"

"No, Stephanie, out of the question."

"But what if something happens?"

"My point exactly."

The argument in the Meanswell homestead spiralled around and around on itself. Neither Stephanie nor Milford raised their voices that much, but both were hoarse by the end of the evening. Stephanie collapsed down on her bed for a good pre-8.08 sulk.

Uncle Milford was being far too paranoid. She had been there the first time they'd searched the house. She had faced the horror of what they had found, and was still in one piece. At this point, the girl felt too much a part of the whole thing to want to just stand by. Her desire to find out what had happened to Murgatroid was just as strong as anyone else's.

She also dreaded the possibility of losing yet another family member to whatever this danger was.

She picked up a photo stand perched on her bedside table. She had found a faded photograph of her great uncle in one of Milford's many family albums. His face unlined, his hair a dark blonde, he stared back at the grand-niece he had never met with a stern, impassive frown. Stephanie had already cried over the cruel fact that she had never been bounced upon his knee. She was no stranger to the sting of missing a loved one who she couldn't even remember.

Uncle Milford, however, was someone whose arms she had run into countless times. If he became the second victim, the little girl could barely imagine how it would destroy her.

"Sportacus and Mister Níu can totally look after themselves," she said to Ziggy, as the two children sat underneath their favourite bay tree during recess. "Officer Lolli's too much of a coward to confront anything, and Robbie is smart enough to get himself out of any danger."

"Or at least get Sportacus to save him," Ziggy added.

"But uncle Milford is so trusting. He's too positive to be afraid, and he can be really unaware of stuff."

Her head dropped, and her rosey bob shrouded her face.

"I'm just afraid that he'll…"

Ziggy stared at her hard, waiting for her to finish her sentence. When a high-pitched sob tore its way out of her, the blonde boy's heart seized.

Silently, he offered her some of his mixed bag of grapes, almonds and coconut ice. She gave him a soft thanks.

It was maddening and distressing— there was little he could do to make his friend happy again. Coconut ice couldn't protect her uncle.

At a time like this, Ziggy thought, Lazytown needed more superheroes.

**

_A/N: PLEASE tell me people got the (sub)text at the beginning of this chapter. I don't think it could have been much clearer had I beaten readers about the head with a sockful of coins labelled "Sportarobbie". :P /bitch mode_


	8. Seven: Non Temo Il Tuo Furor

CHAPTER SEVEN

_La tua mortale disfida accetto,_

_Non temo il tuo furor._

_No, non temo il tuo furor._

_Non temo, indegno, ti sprezzo_

_E non temo il tuo furor._

_(translation)_

_Your deadly challenge I accept,_

_I fear not your fury._

_No, I do not fear your fury._

_I fear not, unworthy one, I despise you_

_And I am not afraid of your anger._

— Sprezzo, Audace, Il Tuo Furore

From the opera "I Puritani" by Vincenzo Bellini

Youngsters peered out of windows and doors at the cavalcade of police cars and fire engines that charged through the usually tranquil streets. Their parents drew them back inside. The emergency backup had been called in at the behest of Officer Lolli— the neighbouring towns of the county had been aggrieved to give up their officers this afternoon for a hazard that was as yet unidentified. The weak sun was beginning to dip below the rooftops before they deigned to arrive.

"Certainly took you long enough!" Lolli bellowed to a random constable who was exiting his patrol car. He was met with a stony silence.

"What is the agenda?" Asked a more obliging fire chief.

Lolli grasped his belt and took a breath.

"Well… well, I suppose…"

"We just need these fellows to stay outside and intervene at the sign of danger, right?" Níu helped.

Lolli nodded vigourously. "Keep your radios close," he commanded.

"Who are these two weirdoes?" Grunted the constable who had been yelled at, indicating the two elves with a jerk of his head.

"We're the local superheroes!" Sportacus announced perkily.

The constable scrunched up his face. What kind of small town had 'local superheroes'? "Whatever."

"Right," Níu declared, turning his attention to the tall silhouette of the manor standing before them, "I believe we should split into two teams. First we'll explore the basement and first floor, and then we will proceed to the second and thrid floors. Milford and Lolli, you may come with me. Sportacus, you go with Robbie…"

"Wait just a minute," Lolli interjected. "We're going to need a police escort for that punk. _I'll_ go with Rotten to make sure he doesn't try anything."

Robbie, who had been leaning sulkily against a nearby lamppost, moved to oppose this. Níu cut him off.

"Very well. Since Robbie knows the layout of the manor better than the rest of us, you two should investigate the basement laboratory. Chances are, the thing we're looking for will be lurking somewhere in there."

Lolli's eyes bulged ever so slightly. He made a few little puffing noises.

"Surely… surely you and your boy are better suited to… to containing this thing, though?"

Sportacus caught Robbie smirk as the policeman squirmed.

"If you insist," Níu replied flatly. "Then you two can take the first floor."

Lolli pursed his lips, and Níu waited for him to complain again. The officer blinked, and suddenly pointed to a rather large, sturdy young policeman who rivalled Robbie in height.

"I'm taking _him_ with me," Lolli insisted. "For extra backup, in case Rotten decides to do me in."

Finally, as Robbie gave a hard glare at the back of Lolli's broad head, six flashlights released six little beams, already shining softly in the fading afternoon.

They steadily made their way into the dense garden. Robbie blinked, perceiving a slight shimmer of the undergrowth. Hopefully it was just another skink.

Loose, cracked tiles scraped as heavy feet fell upon the landing.

"The stairs to the basement are behind the last door at the end of the hallway," Robbie told the others, his gruff voice made tiny in the thick, cold air.

The footsteps of Sportacus, Níu and Milford thumped softly away, dwindling to silence.

Feeling wary, Robbie looked upon the darkened faces of Lolli and his giant escort, expecting the dumpy officer to start hollering out orders. After a few seconds of discomfited, unfriendly silence, the villain ran out of patience.

"Since your incomparable genius seems to have been stymied, may I suggest we look in the dining room? It's where the body was discovered, and we might find some kind of lead there."

Before Lolli could refuse, the tall officer made a noise of agreement.

Following the footsteps of the other group stamped into the dust, they padded down the hallway. As they headed further away from the front door, the murk, like a stale fog, grew slowly denser.

Robbie shivered at the imprint of Murgatroid's body, still visible on the dirty floor. The hurried footprints of the police who had removed him also remained, shallower and fainter.

The two policemen began to wander about the room, flashlights roaming across the furnishings. Robbie was still fixated on the ghostly patterns. His eyes continued to adjust to the gloom, and soon he could make out subtler shapes in the built-up sediment. One pair of the streaked footprints was staggering towards the body, being lost in a large smear upon the imprint of the victim's legs. Trailing back, Robbie carefully followed where it had come from. Uneven and heavy, the gait of the feet looked pained and unsteady.

These were Murgatroid's last steps.

His pace quickening slightly, the man continued following them backwards. The victim had stumbled and grabbed at the edge of the table— the lacy tablecloth was crumpled and disturbed— and had approached it from the doorway to the sunroom.

"Where do you think you're going, Rotten?"

"To find what killed old man Meanswell."

Between facing this prospect and leaving the villain to his own devices, Lolli chose the former.

The sunroom, jutting out of the South-East side of the house, was by now a laughable misnomer. The patches of frosted glass that weren't blackened with grime were caked by mounds of dead, rotting foliage. Not a single splinter of outside light could puncture the years of residue. The other doorway, leading to the kitchen, had clearly been Murgatroid's point of entry; the door had been busted open with a mallet that was still lying on the tiles.

Instantly a question was posed: what on earth had drawn the old man in here?

Just as quickly, it was answered. All three men doubled over in a fit of coughing as the pungent scent of rotting meat hit their nostrils.

"There must be other bodies in here!" Lolli wheezed.

The smell seemed to dissipate. The moment they could breathe properly again, the group frantically passed their flashlights over the floor, expecting and dreading a morbid discovery.

There was none to be had, all that could be seen was more dust. Then Robbie's flashlight settled upon something that was at once ordinary and bizarre.

Sitting on a wrought-iron stand in the corner was a small lilac shrub in a glazed pot. The pale green stems fanned out, creating a pleasing arc of soft flowers extending over the side of the stand. Its fragrance wafted slightly through the putrid smell haunting the room. It was clearly alive, blossoming just the same as its cousins out in the open air.

A freezing quiver went through Robbie. He mutely stared at the policemen, summoning their attention.

"It's just a flower pot, you big nancy."

Too impatient to indulge their stupidity, the villain scanned the room for other plants. Some pots held the black, crumbling skeletons of long-dead shrubs, perhaps choked by whatever had created those fumes.

The briefest whisk of green was caught in the circle of Robbie's flashlight. He fumbled with the torch, the light wobbled as he tried to find it again.

A vine dotted with small, dark leaves, was coiled across the floor. The man's heartbeat throbbed madly.

"Don't move," he murmured.

"What are you tryin' to pull!?" The large policeman exclaimed, and he menaced forward. He trod on the sinewy vine, and before anyone could anticipate it, the massive officer was tripped off his feet as the plant snaked around his ankle.

"Hey! Whatsit doin'? Stop it!" He growled.

Lolli screeched, his flashlight finally resting on the massive head of an overgrown plant that had taken over half of the South-East wall. As the large officer struggled harder, more vines grasped his limbs like a spider weaving silk around its prey.

Something dripped onto the floor. Jutting out from the husk of the plant was a rosette of spiny shoots, wet with some sort of sticky mucilage. As they unfurled, the smell of rotting flesh intensified, and the gunk began to ooze onto the floor in a sticky rain of rivulets.

The helpless onlookers were both backed into the other corner. Desperate, driven by fear for life, the mighty bulk of the officer finally tore through the stronger vines with a great roar. The thinner vines snapped as he wrestled free of the predator's grasp. He bolted from the room, leaving the other two still hunched in the corner.

"Move!" Robbie urged.

Before they could, further screams filtered in from outside. A high pitched war-cry began to amplify, as a patter of undersized yet solid footsteps echoed through the front hall, into the dining room, until they were just outside.

"ZIGGYCUS TO THE—"

It all happened in less than a second. The little blonde boy, dressed in full superhero getup, thundered in through the doorway. Awakened, alert and hungry, the plant swiftly cast three thick tendrils out at the small clumsy body, fastening itself securely around his short arms and legs. As he squealed and floundered, the plant managed to painstakingly pull him closer to the aneasthetising ring of venom.

Lolli, still screaming, scrambled to his feet and ran through the door, but was blocked by the approach of Níu, Sportacus and Milford. The four men were rendered paralysed by the horrific scene.

There would always be a part of Robbie that would berate himself for his next action. There had been many times in the past when he had witnessed a child in trouble: a scraped knee, a twisted ankle, a broken bone. Sometimes he had even put children in (partial) danger himself, though with the presence of Sportaflop, nothing had ever come of it. Whatever trauma a child sustained, Robbie had always reminded himself it was for their own good. The sooner all the little coddled, milksop rugrats of the world realised its inherent dangers, the better.

But some unfamiliar, long-dormant instinct was triggered in his nerves. Not only was a young life directly in danger… The sight of this monstrous organism, most probably created by his father, about to ravage the form of an innocent little boy, spoke to his most grievous buried memories.

Just as quickly as the beast had lashed out, Robbie grabbed hold of the first heavy, blunt object he could find (an errant poker for the fireplace). With all the strength his lean body could garner, he struck at the green limbs entwined about Ziggy's still wildly flailing body.

He severed one, others went limp in reaction to the blow. Ziggy slipped from its grasp and scarpered from the room in tears.

Sportacus leapt forward to assist Robbie, but was clueless where to begin. One of the vines whipped itself around the taller man's ankle, tripping him up and dragging him towards it. A bead of the venom landed on his leg, and he cried out in sharp agony.

Using all his strength, Sportacus instigated a sort of tug-of-war with the creature. Another vine broke, Robbie stumbled across the floor.

Thinking quickly, as the monster reeled, he harpooned its noxious heart with the poker.

Like an insect under a magnifying glass, its great limbs thrashed about wildly. Taking the opportunity, the man stabbed the plant again and again, screaming with the effort, until its only movement was flaccid, jagged twitching. Robbie's breathing was heavy and ragged.

Quickly, wordlessly, he was rushed out of the house to the local GP's clinic. Ziggy followed closely, clutching Sportacus' free hand.


	9. Midlogue

MIDLOGUE

_The Sydney Morning Herald— 30__th__ April 1983_

_From Valkyrie to Madonna_

_Fresh from her first performance as Norma on stage at the Sydney Opera House, Icelandic diva La Fata Lillà speaks to Sharon Craig._

_Her serene, pale eyes are cast out across the harbour, and she smiles lazily back at the grinning gates of Luna Park. The long ringlets of her vivd lilac hair upstage the jacarandas of Lavender Bay. She bestows her praise upon the balmy sun and light breeze, and takes another sip of shiraz. Last night, beneath the sails of the Opera House, she threw herself into a blazing funeral pyre lit for the Roman proconsul Pollione, in one of the most difficult bel canto roles ever written for the soprano voice._

_Mere weeks after finishing a successful season at the Royal Swedish Opera (where she had her rise to fame more than a decade previous in the role of Isolde, earning accolades for her _"Leibestod"_), she was entreatied by the director of Opera Australia to come to our shores and finally gratify the legions of fans that awaited her. The incentive: the revered, coveted role of Norma, Bellini's masterwork for the dramatic coloratura soprano._

_The title she is known by is _La Fata Lillà_, The Lilac Fairy. The only queen of the opera world to have hailed from the frigid reaches of Iceland, it is quite appropriate that her most famous role to date has been Brunhilde, the valkyrie heroine of Wagner's infamously epic Ring Cycle. Record sales of the four-opera saga have numbered in the tens of millions worldwide. However, after countless sell-out performances at the theatres of Northern Europe, this elegant Nordic songstress is now looking to a different arena._

"_The Wagnerian roles are stalwart, full of tension and martial strength," she remarks softly, her voice breathy and lilting. "But there is something warmer, and more liquid in the Italian operas. Rome and Milan are the source of pure bel canto singing. Beautiful long vowels, not clipped by Germanic consonants. I had a taste of this warmth in my Traviata tour of '74, and now I want more of it."_

_At this point, we are interrupted by the rustling of a pot plant in the corner of the hotel suite. From behind the large dark leaves emerges a small monster, delicate white fingers groping the warm air from under a felt blanket, embroidered with a cartoon cow. It approaches the table we sit at, reaching gauchely for the nearby plate of lamingtions._

_Lillà laughs, gently directing the little beast's mitt toward the sticky treat. Once it grasps its prize, a head of dark curls emerges from under the blanket and sets about devouring the delicacy. It grunts with pleasure, and its mother gives it a tender reprimand in the pleasing, feathery speech of their native Icelandic._

"_Robbie has earned his own title in our circle of friends across the world," she tells me, her voice full of love as she admires the lamington-crazy seven-year-old._

_In between mouthfuls, the child looks at me haughtily with the same bright eyes as his mother. He draws breath, and surprises me with an astoundingly resonant singing voice._

"Si. Mi Chiamano Glannitino

Ma il mio nome è Roberto!" _He warbles, mimicing Puccini's Mimi._

"'_Glannitino'," Lillà repeats. "It is a portmenteau of my nickname for him, 'Glanni', Icelandic for 'clown' or 'madman', and the Italian suffix for 'little one'. My little clown."_

_Anecdotes of this backstage bambino have circulated in opera society over the past few years. The most popular one describes a party held by the director of the Savoy Theatre in London. To the surprise of the high-profile guests, the small boy leapt up onto a table and fearlessly sang a rendition of the Pirate King's aria from Gilbert and Sullivan's "Pirates of Penzance"— right in front of the aging Donald Adams himself. For his efforts, he was given a ruffle of his hair and a small bag of sherberts._

"_I was determined not to become a stage mother, but it seems I cannot pull Glannitino away from the lure of the opera. Every aspect of production fascinates him, from songcraft to the architecture of the theatre itself."_

"_I saw him gaping at our Opera House at the premiere last night," I interject with a laugh._

_He eyes me again, and mumbles something to his mother in Icelandic._

_As I watch parent and child bickering softly in their graceful language, a thought occurs to me. I ask Lillà if her attraction to the Italian operas had perhaps become stronger since becoming a mother._

_She stares out at the harbour again, her delicate brow furrowing as she processes this. "You know," she replies eventually, "I never thought about it that way. I suppose he has softened me. We Icelanders are, like your British ancestors, known for a stiff-upper-lip attitude, staunchly braving cold winters without complaint. And yet this lovely, pretty little demon of mine is so soft, so sensitive. His pain is my pain, and I suppose I have allowed myself to be more vulnerable to sentiment since he came into my life. After all, the relationship central to all Italian culture _is_ the mother and her son. The likes of Cio-Cio San, Suor Angelica, and even the confrontational Norma, do seem more sympathetic to me."_

_Speaking of which, I ask her, is there any chance that she will ever deign to perform Puccini's crowd-pleasing, heart-breaking Butterfly?_

_She grins, amused by the idea. "I have heard there are talks of the Vienna Opera mounting a production, but it is in very early stages thus far," she tells me. "If my manager, and more importantly, my son, allow it, I may consider throwing my hat in the ring to sing _'Un Bel Dí'_."_

_Vincenzo Bellini's "Norma", starring La Fata Lillà and Melbourne tenor Nathan Boggs, premiered last night at the Sydney Opera House. It runs until the 26__th__ of May._


	10. Eight: En Garde

CHAPTER EIGHT

_Le cirque est plein du haut en bas;_

_Les spectateurs, perdant la tete,_

_Les spectateurs s'interpellent_

_A grand fracas! _

_Apostrophes, cris et tapage_

_Pousses jusques a la fureur!_

_Car c'est la fete du courage!_

_C'est la fete des gens de coeur!_

_Allons! en garde! Allons! Allons! ah!_

_Toreador, en garde! Toreador, Toreador!_

_(translation)_

_The arena is full, from top to bottom;_

_The spectators, losing their heads,_

_The spectators began a big fracas!_

_Apostrophes, cries, and uproar_

_Grow to a furor!_

_Because it is a celebration of courage!_

_It is the celebration of people with heart!_

_Let's go, on guard! Let's go! Let's go! Ah!_

_Toreador, on guard! Toreador, Toreador!_

— The Toreador Song

From the opera "Carmen" by Georges Bizet

"Oh, Mister Rotten, is there anything I can possibly do to repay you? I'm in awe of your courage. If it weren't for you, I can't imagine what would have happened to my little Zigfried."

Still smarting from a thorough scolding, Ziggy smiled shyly at the man from his seat next to the GP's desk. The doctor herself was examining a blistering red wound on Robbie's shin. She clicked her tongue.

"This is the same poison we found in old man Meanswell's veins. You didn't get nearly as big a dose of the stuff, Mister Rotten, but I'm still baffled at the speed of your recovery. Technically, you should have lost the ability to walk by now."

At this moment, the door rattled open, and in burst Sportacus.

"Robbie!" He cried, almost bowling the doctor over to reach him. "How are you feeling?"

All this time, Robbie had been staring at the plain white wall directly in front of him. He didn't shift his gaze, nor did he give any indication of having heard the elf. Sportacus became worried.

"Robbie?"

At long last: "The smell was terrible."

Sportacus nodded sympathetically. "Pabbi reckons the stink of dead flesh was strong enough to have brought the Mayor's uncle to the house, all the way over from next door."

Robbie narrowed his eyes at the wall. "Not that," he responded, "the dining room. I remember the smell in that dining room. The countless meals of boiled meat and bland, overcooked vegetables. Devoid of any pleasure. The moment I stepped in there, the memory of that smell stuck in the back of my head. I used to feast on tarts and truffles. Then I had to subsist on my father's metallic-tasting swill."

Sportacus wished he could find words of solace for this.

After a fitful night's sleep, Robbie was driven by hunger to head into town. A slight twinge in his leg still niggled at him as he climbed the stairs, but it was nowhere near as discomfiting as what awaited him when he opened the hatch.

"Hey Robbie!"

The little boy's buck teeth glinted in the sunlight, and Robbie squinted.

This was the only child who had ever harboured fear for the villain. The others thought nothing of confronting and reproaching him, but Ziggy had usually kept a respectful distance. He seemed to be the most sensitive one in his group, adoring Sportacus and dreading the villain's own antagonism with a genuine passion.

Robbie sighed inwardly when he realised what effect last night would have had on the blonde urchin.

He thrust out a crumpled plastic bag.

"Want some of my coconut ice?"

Robbie gave him a wan smile, weakly pushing away the bag. Too wearied to get angry, he decided to apply casual indifference in the hopes it would shake the boy off. He climbed out of the hatch, hopped down onto the earth and began striding along the road.

He turned around. Ziggy was cheerfully trailing behind like a puppy.

"Um um um, I got the day off from school today, and Mummy is taking me to the café for a yummy sandwich. D'you wanna come, huh?"

Robbie pursed his lips. He had been planning on going to the café as well. Short of packing the kid in a box and mailing him to Helsinki, he was stuck with him.

"Sure," he exhaled, defeated.

"Yaaay! I'll give you some of my sandwich if you like!"

Along with the cheesecake he was craving, Robbie made a mental note to order a large, strong coffee.

The little bell on the café door was drowned out by a swell of deafening screeches.

"Oh, THERE HE IS!"

"The hero of the hour!"

"Our very own Dark Knight!"

_Oh good,_ Robbie thought, once his ears stopped ringing. _Not only am I a target for kids today, but mothers as well._ Cheesecake couldn't have been worth this.

The quartet of ladies dragged him over to the table they had been sitting at, and plonked him down on an empty chair. All talking over the top of each other, Robbie could not make sense of the interrogation. Happy to join in the clamour, Ziggy hopped up onto his knee, also chattering away.

One woman managed to eclipse the others. Robbie felt a thin hand, all rings and painted nails, grip his own.

"Oh, Mister Rotten, I do declare," twittered the woman who Robbie knew to be the rich boy's mother, "how on earth did you slay that horrible beast?"

The expectant silence was rather creepy after all that noise.

"Um… I kinda… stabbed it."

They all gushed at this simple statement.

"Oh, if only poor old Murgatroid had been lucky enough to have your help," the rich woman cooed.

"Speaking of which," another pantsuited woman purred, squeezing Robbie's shoulder sharply, "I've heard you're quite the Mister Fix-it. I've got plenty of things around the house—"

"WINNIE! I hardly think Mister Rotten needs _your_ kind of patronage."

Huh. Just last week, Robbie had caught this flirtatious lady demanding that Officer Lolli be put on twenty-four hour watch by the villain's billboard.

And then, something happened which was completely unexpected, though not entirely unpleasant. Sometime during all of this, the school bell must have rung. The café door opened, and in bounced Stephanie. She scanned the tables until she set eyes upon Robbie. Without a moment's hesitation, she rushed over to the table, flung open her arms and squeezed him as tight as she could.

It was the first hug he had been given in many years.

"I'm so sorry, Robbie," she exclaimed.

Ill at ease, not sure what to do, he remained still. "Oh… okay. Why?"

"It's my fault Ziggy went in there, it's my fault you got hurt."

The women gasped. Someone murmured an "Oh, Stephanie."

"Um, I'm alright, the wound just kinda tingles now," the man alleged, trying to placate her.

She looked up at him with huge brown eyes. "That doesn't matter. I told Ziggy I was worried about Uncle Milford, and I put the whole idea into his head. I'm so glad you were there, if you weren't, he'd be _dead_, like my great-uncle."

The child squeezed him again, her thick pink bob pressed into his shirt, and Ziggy decided to do likewise. Two little kids were cuddling him— Robbie wasn't quite sure how to feel about it. They were acting like he was Sportacus.

There was something nice about receiving such attention, but a part of him felt like he didn't deserve it. Now that he thought about it, he had slain that plant largely for his own sake. Created by his father, the ultimate source of all recent suspicion against him… He couldn't have simply run away and allowed it to keep living upon Lazytown soil.

**

He eventually escaped from The Females That Shame Forgot, and bought a whole stockpile of sweets and pastries at the supermarket. He decided that he would try to avoid going out until the novelty of the bad-boy-turned-rescuer had worn off. Everyday villainy would, for now, not be an option.

Having returned to the silence of his lair, he felt a yearning to continue working on his current creation— the one which, he was certain, would defeat Sportakook's domination over him. It was taking form beautifully, smooth and white, an exquisite glossy masterpiece. It was sitting in a small room to the side of the lair's main chamber, and almost seemed to beckon to Robbie.

Remembering himself, he looked to the objects sitting on his workbench. The previous night, as he was being carried to the clinic, he had commanded Sportacus to fetch two things for him from the manor: a sample of the dead mutant plant, and the small potted lilac which had quietly watched the whole struggle from its snug corner.

Donning gloves, he then pulled a slime-covered stamen out from the zip lock bag it had been contained in. This specimen would be more than enough to work with.

As for the lilac… Robbie could not bring himself to uproot and dissect it. Gingerly, he took a small clipping of the plant, and then placed the pot on the table by his armchair. If it managed to flourish in that awful house, it would also flourish down here.

Turning back to his workbench, he commenced his experiments.

**

A few weeks passed, and Níu remained in town. Even though the beast that had threatened the people's lives was now gone, Lazytown was reluctant to farewell one of its beloved protectors. Likewise, the old elf was quite pleased to stay— partly because, as he divulged to his son, he was not sure it the whole problem had been truly sorted out. He was a man who hated leaving things unfinished, and was waiting for a sign of true closure.

During one of the first genuinely warm days of the year, he was at the sports park with Stephanie. The girl had pulled him aside after school and asked for a one-on-one lesson in _Glíma_. Níu was surprised that she had even known about the old form of Icelandic folk wrestling (had Sportacus told her about it?), but he was happy to oblige. Ever the gentle patriarch, he made sure to go as easy as possible on the little girl, but was impressed at the vigour of her performance. She also seemed to take to the sport's code of honour quite strongly: It was a gentleman's game, and despite her zeal, Stephanie performed more chivalrously than many of the older, hulking male opponents that Níu had taken on in his time.

As she sat under one of the apple trees after the lesson, drinking in a book about the sport which Níu had provided, the old elf leant against a stucco wall, staring up at the clouds. His son was ascending to his newfangled airship after a standard-issue rescue. The Spring rains would be coming very soon.

"Psst."

Níu looked around.

"Hey, Grandpa. Over here."

The elf rolled his eyes. "OH, HI ROBBIE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING THERE."

Robbie scowled up at Níu from his hiding place behind a flowering bush, as Stephanie rushed up to the two men.

"Where have you _been,_ Robbie? Ziggy's been asking for you every day!"

The man tried to ignore her.

"I have something I need to show you," he said flatly.

"Oh?" Níu intoned.

"Come and meet me behind the theatre later this afternoon."

"Can I come too?"

Robbie grimaced at the little girl. "Sure, whatever. As long as you don't touch anything."

"Where will you be taking us?" Asked the elf, already guessing the answer.

"To show you the secret of that mutant plant."

**


	11. Nine: Ridi, Pagliaccio

CHAPTER NINE

_Ridi, Pagliaccio, e ognun applaudirà!_

_Tramuta in lazzi lo spasmo ed il pianto_

_in una smorfia il singhiozzo e 'l dolor, Ah!_

_Ridi, Pagliaccio!_

_sul tuo amore infranto!_

_Ridi del duol, che t'avvelena il cor!_

_(translation)_

_Laugh, clown, so the crowd will cheer!_

_Turn your distress and tears into jest,_

_Your pain and sobbing into a funny face - Ah!_

_Laugh, clown!_

_At your broken love!_

_Laugh at the grief that poisons your heart!_

— Vesti La Giubba

From the opera "Pagliacci" by Ruggiero Leoncavallo

It was almost five-thirty before Robbie emerged. The stage door of the theatre opened, and he gave a bemused look at the people who were waiting for him.

"What's all this?" He barked.

"Robbie, we've been waiting here for almost an hour!" Trixie whined.

Ziggy ran up and hugged the man's leg.

Stephanie cringed sheepishly at Robbie's indignant glare. "We sort of told the others that you were gonna show us something."

Níu smirked. "I do believe the children were missing you."

Insult was added to injury as Sportacus flipped up to join them.

"What, is that it, or are we waiting for the cavalry division, too?" Robbie remarked, resenting the blue elf's cheery smile.

"Sorry…" Stephanie squeaked.

With a big, begrudging sigh, Robbie flung the stage door entirely open and beckoned for the group to follow him. "You're lucky I'm too exhausted to chase all of you tag-alongs off."

They headed along the wide, darkened corridor backstage. The clump of giggly youngsters were brought to a surprise halt as Robbie opened a broom cupboard and started fumbling about inside it.

Upon the wall on her right, Stephanie noticed a collection of framed, yellowed posters hanging in one long, neat row. The one she stood next to boasted a tall, beautiful woman holding up a glass of wine in a theatrical toast. The scrolling title read: 'Verdi's "La Traviata"'.

The long violet curls were unfamiliar, but something about her white skin and lively green eyes was very haunting indeed.

"Alright," Robbie announced. "Single file. And keep your sticky little hands to yourself. That goes double for you, Sportajock."

The children gaped at the heavy door that seemed to have magically appeared in the back of the dingy closet. All traces of daylight vanished as they passed through it, carefully treading down a set of old concrete stairs into an even dingier concrete hallway. Their only light source was an occasional fluroescent wall-sconce. The giggling and chattering died down, and the group followed the villain in awed silence. There were more staircases to descend, deeper and longer than the first. Down they went into the underground.

"This is like a low-budget 'Phantom of the Opera'," Stingy quipped.

"Shut it, pipsqueak," retorted Robbie.

After an entirely disorienting journey, they came to the final corridor, at the end of which was a set of metallic double doors. Without any ceremony, Robbie produced a key, unlocked the doors and swept them open.

"WOAH!!" Someone cried.

The doorway opened up to reveal an enormous room with a ceiling higher than the tallest buildings in town. Grille catwalks and stairways criss-crossed it, leading to other, tantalising-looking doorways. The entire thing seemed to be constructed of metal. Down on the floor of this massive chamber was a mess of machinery, and another catwalk holding both a row of strange glass tubes and a large musical instrument similar to a pipe-organ. In the middle of the space, upon a thick rug of bright orange, there sat a deep, fuzzy recliner of an equally bright orange. This last object looked to be the single wreath of warmth and softness that floated in this nebula of chilly steel.

"What is this place?" Pixel gaped. His boffin senses were saturated, eyes shining brighter than a toddler in a candy shop.

"It's my house," Robbie answered curtly, "and you brats had better behave while you're here."

"I thought you could only enter through the hatch behind that big billboard," Sportacus said.

"That's what you think, Sportagit."

As he shot out this comeback, Robbie hurried over to one of the smaller doors that stood ajar, quickly slamming it shut and locking it fast.

"This place used to be a bomb shelter, back in the olden days," Níu told them. "It was designed to be as accessible as possible, with entrances and exits all over town. However, I think some of them may have been sealed off by now."

"Alright, enough with the history lesson," Robbie snapped, irritably rounding the group up and drawing them over to his workbench. "Let's get this over with."

From a shelf under the messy benchtop, he pulled out a tray of plastic cartons, all full of dirt. Each one had a few tiny green saplings peeking out of the soil.

"I sent a sample of the mutant plant to a university in the city for testing," he began. "Biochemistry has never been my strong suit, but I was able to conduct a few basic experiments of my own. The researchers' results came back to me today, and by putting that together with my own various findings, I think I've figured out the source of that horrid thing."

"Well done, Robbie!" Sportacus cheered, and was silenced by a Look from the tall man.

He reached under the benchtop again and pulled out a beaten-up old diary.

"My father was more meticulous about keeping diaries than Pinky is." He sneered a little. "Although none of _his_ entries were about how cute Sportadork's butt is."

Stephanie's jaw dropped, and Trixie sniggered.

Robbie flipped through the pages of the book in his hands. "He wrote volumes about that plant. It seems to be some deviation of _Dionaea muscipula_, or the Venus flytrap, hence its carnivorous diet. His aim was to create a life-form which could raise itself from the dead. He named it 'Project Anastasia'."

He looked up at this point, to make sure nobody was poking around his machines. All eyes were fixed on him. Perhaps after studying the project so closely for weeks, Robbie had forgotten how astonishing "Project Anastasia" actually was. He himself had almost choked on his coffee when he'd first read about it.

He cleared his throat. "He did not succeed. He was arrested and had his equipment seized before he had the chance. The furthest he had gotten was a plant which could survive in very harsh surroundings. That monster had been growing steadily for fifteen years, eating rodents and insects. It almost made a meal of Murgatroid, who broke free. He only died from the heavy spraying of venom he was covered in."

Stephanie put a hand to her mouth, and Sportacus put a bracing hand on her shoulder. He was a little concerned at the detatched voice Robbie was describing all of this with. This was his own father, crafting monsters. Surely the man would be affected by this on some level. His eyes had not left the pages of the diary.

Over these past weeks, Sportacus had noticed a change, though only very slight, in Robbie's behaviour. Perhaps it had been his sharing of a common goal with the townspeople. He retained his usual bluntness, his disinclinations, but Sportacus swore there was now a slighty softer character to his snarling, leonine voice. The elf prayed that Robbie's current surge of popularity in town might further wear down the sphinx-like defenses he always wore. They _had_ been invited to share his home and his scholarly talents… but that aloof and impatient aura currently surrounding him did not bode well.

"If Anastasia was such an important project, what was she doing in the sunroom?" Asked Stingy.

Eyes still on the diary, Robbie raised a sardonic eyebrow. "If you were a fat, stupid policeman, would you look for a mad scientist's Frankenstein Monster in a pretty little sunroom, or in a creepy basement lab?"

Continuing, Robbie picked up one of the little pot plants. "I have deprived these saplings of sunlight, water and nutrients. This soil is totally infertile. And yet, they've been doing well. These three," he arranged three of the pots together on the right side of the bench, "are seedlings of the flesh-eating plant."

As he put each one down, the children quickly backed away from the innocent-looking things.

"What about those other three?" Sportacus asked.

"Those…?" Robbie growled, baring his teeth.

"Those… are lilacs." A laugh tumbled from his mouth. "Totally harmless."

The kids laughed along with him, grateful for something to alleviate the weight of the information.

Their mirth was cut short by the blunt command: "Now, get out."

"Wait," Stephanie interjected. "What if…"

"I said 'get out', Pinky."

Before he could push his 'guests' out the door, Níu stepped into his path, fixing the villain with a Look of his own.

"Answer her question, Robbie."

Robbie pursed his lips, eyes cast downwards. "Fine."

"Wh… what if that thing dropped seeds? There could be more plants growing on the grounds. And what if your father has been able to keep working on this project from prison?"

He took on an evasive look again, and headed back to his workbench.

"First of all, you needn't worry about more plants, because I shall do _this_ to the garden…"

He took out a jar of chunky salt crystals, and proceeded to sprinkle them over all three of the carnivorous saplings.

"The salt will kill anything green, stopping any other mutant saplings before they have a chance to spread."

Stephanie was a little saddened by this—she pictured that verdant forest in front of the manor becoming a lifeless brown wasteland.

"And second of all, I don't think my father can do much damage now, seeing as he's been dead for years."

He turned away from the others, summoning a solid poker-face, after the briefest glimpse of sorrow passed over his features.

"Oh," Stephanie murmured, her mood thoroughly darkened.

"Is that all? Will you get out of my house, now?"

The girl tried to resist blurting out another question, failing miserably. "Wh… why was your dad sent to prison in the first place? Experiments or not, it doesn't seem like he was doing anything that bad."

Before Robbie could react, Sportacus interrupted with a heartfelt reply.

"Not only was he caught grave-robbing, but he also _hurt_—"

Sportacus himself was interrupted by the heated, shocked glare Robbie was drilling into him.

A silence froze the three of them.

"Oh, cool! What's this?"

Pixel's bright red hair could be seen sticking out of a large crate of corrugated iron. A small pile of discarded gadgets was already lying at his feet.

"HEY! Get out of that, Poodle!" Robbie stalked up to the tall boy, followed closely by a worried Sportacus.

The child emerged, holding another invention in his hands, and Stephanie gave out a scream.

"Pixel, don't touch that!"

"Why? I think he looks kinda cute."

He scratched the chin of the small robot dog, and before anyone could stop him, he'd flipped the switch on its back.

Stephanie and Sportacus tensely backed away, awaiting the hound's wrath. Instead, it looked about the lair with curious, light blue eyes, and drooled placidly. When Pixel scratched it again, it panted happily.

"I had to reprogramme Sugar-Pie," Robbie explained, rather pacified by the others marvelling at his creation. "It was the only way to stop him running amok in my lair."

"Why didn't you just turn him off?" Sportacus asked.

The man's posture slackened. "Yeah, well," he grunted, "I kinda realised that later."

Pixel placed the dog gently on the floor. "Sugar-pie, sit!"

It dumbly tilted its head, wagging its little tail.

"Wow, just like most real dogs."

Suddenly, everybody recoiled as a soaring soprano voice split the air from a pair of large speakers. All eyes fell on a shamefaced Ziggy, whose pudgy fingers were hovering over a panel of brightly-coloured buttons. He had also caused a metal wall-panel to slide back, revealing a towering shelf of music albums.

Stephanie strode up to the wee offender, ready to deliver a stern lecture. Before she could open her mouth, something sitting on the shelf caught her eye, black and white and sparkly.

"Oh wow… you have Madonna on vinyl, Robbie!? I didn't know you liked _cool_ music!"

"Don't touch that, Pinky, it's a first-run pressing!"

She simpered at him. "Can you put in on for me, Robbie? Oh please please please?"

He shifted his eyes toward the elves, giving them an I'm-At-The-End-Of-My-Patience scowl.

"We'll fetch the kids' parents to take them home," Sportacus promised.

"You'd better," said Robbie's scowl.

The villain sat hugging his knees on the steps of the catwalk with his head lowered, yearning for the moment when they would leave. Thanks to his own blasted generosity, his dark sanctuary had been converted into a playground. Why could he not bring himself to shoo them all out? The familiar strains of 'Into the Groove' accompanied Stephanie and Sportacus' spirited dancing, and Robbie felt jilted. The Little Pink Thing had stolen _his_ Madge. (Why couldn't she get her own divas? Next thing you know, she'd be into Dame Joan and Monserrat Caballe, too.)

Ziggy had commandered the recliner, stroking Sugar-Pie's purple pelt, as Pixel phoned his parents on his hands-free cell. "Yeah… just come to the big billboard and Robbie can let you in."

"WHAT!? I didn't say they could come down here!"

Pixel had already hung up. He shrugged at Robbie. "They'll only be in here a few seconds."

"That's a few seconds too many!"

"Come on, lad, I'll come with you to let them in," Níu urged, putting a bracing hand on Robbie's shoulders. The irritated master obviously needed more babysitting than his young guests. The old elf swallowed his remorse, reflecting that this character-building would be good for Robbie.

The tall man obeyed, choking back a defeated sob.

**

This wasn't happening.

At least, that was the mantra stringing through Robbie's head as he desperately clung to his last fibre of calm.

He had originally intended to rush Old Man Nine in and out of his lair in the space of ten minutes. Now, at least twenty people had invaded his inner sanctum with only a few polite insistences.

Having to simultaneously warn people not to touch his things, keep Sportadork's dancing from getting too gymnastic, avoid Trixie's oversexed mother and yell at the whole mob to leave proved too much. He returned to his foetal position on the catwalk steps. At least Sugar-Pie was enjoying the attention, prancing around the guests' feet.

Oh God, could he smell pizza?

"Great party, Mister Rotten," came the voice of some anonymous older sibling.

He idly wondered why Sportacus' crystal wasn't beeping madly.

There was a break in the music. Robbie reflexively looked up, and his gaze met with the blue-eyed boy himself, kneeling before him.

"Why the sad face?" He implored sweetly. "Come on Robbie, get up and dance with us."

The villain steeled himself. "Robbie Rotten doesn't dance."

The nearby children all gave him the same funny look before breaking into dismissive laughter.

"Are you kidding or something?" Trixie scoffed. "You dance with us all the time!"

"Yeah. You danced with us when you were a pirate…"

"…And when you were a ringmaster…"

"…And a scoutmaster…"

"And you danced with me all day when you were a dance instructor," Stephanie twinkled.

Robbie pouted at this reminder of his theatrics.

"Come on, I'll teach you how to do 'Bing Bang'." Small hands tugged on large pale ones.

"You must be joking, Pinky."

"Oh, Mister Rotten!" Beckoned a booming, come-hither voice from across the room. "Come and let me show you my deep-tissue massage technique!"

A terrified smile gripped his features. "I mean— sure thing, Stephanie."

The record had changed. It was a little awkward to 'up, up, do the jump' to The Cure, but the participants managed well enough. After trying to make an escape at the end of the first track, Robbie was dragged back onto the floor by Sportacus, who made sure to adhere to the reluctant host. He gently corrected his charge, ensuring the man didn't lose his balance. By the time 'Love Cats' had screeched its last few bars, Robbie's anxiety had begun to recede. He grew less mindful of the horde occupying his usually peaceful home, allowing himself to enjoy the pulse of the pop music, the giddy whirl of his body in motion, and the kindly hand of the elf bolstering his movements.

A few songs later, he withdrew, his tired body resisting any further exercise.

Níu drew his son away as well. "Teaching a self-proclaimed villain to dance," he said, when the two were apart from the others. "There aren't many children who would have the courage for that. You weren't kidding when you said she was special."

Sportacus sighed. "She's still young, Pabbi. I don't know whether I'm even going to ask her yet."

Níu nodded. "Fair enough. But you said you had a gut feeling. I wouldn't put it past her."

While Robbie pushed his way through the still-yammering throng, looking for a place to sit down, his ears picked up a conversation in the corner of the lair.

"Oh my God, check out the frilly gown this fat chick is wearing."

"Doesn't he have any music that isn't, like, a hundered years old?"

"Oh look, here's some more Madonna."

Two overdressed teenage girls with jet-black hair (at a guess, Trixie's sisters), were tearing through Robbie's prized record collection. With all the ignorance of Huns raiding the library of Alexandria, they were thumbing through the inset booklets, fingering the vinyl and tossing the cardboard covers carelessly to the floor.

"Hey, look at this weird chick. 'La Fata Lillà'. Lame."

"Who has purple hair, anyway?"

"Must be an eighties thing."

"GET YOUR HANDS OFF THAT!"

The girls cowered under their host's fury, one of them too shocked to object as he ripped the album out of her unworthy hands.

"DON'T YOU TOUCH THIS! DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH THIS!"

A number of people had turned to gape at the scene. Níu analysed the situation, and sprung into action. The fuse had finally gone off, but there was still time for damage control.

"I remember Robbie was quite the classical music fan at school," he declared light-heartedly. "I see nothing has changed in that respect."

A few people dared to laugh nervously.

"Robbie, why don't you play us something?"

"What?" His head snapped up as he frantically salvaged his defiled records.

"On your organ up there," Níu insisted. "You were always the highlight of the school recitals." The old elf hoped against hope that arousing Robbie's vanity would be enough to avert disaster.

"That's only because _he_ made me perform at those stupid concerts," the man grumbled under his breath.

"Come on Robbie, play for us!" Stephanie pleaded.

The tension had begun to ease, and he could feel an increasing amount of hopeful smiles being aimed at him. Mechanically, he lifted his head again, exhaled, and slowly ascended the catwalk.

Somehow, without looking, he knew that the only two people applauding were Sportadope and Ziggy.

Robbie sat at his organ. What should he play? 'Toccata and Fugue in D Minor' came to mind with a quiver of cruel delight. This option was withdrawn when he realised anyone wetting their pants would leave puddles on his precious floor.

He remembered an arietta he learnt from Mamma, one of Paisiello's. She had told him it was a song for the coquette, the deceptive flirt. The tune was fluttery, feminine and light, the lyrics plaintive and despairing. Its purpose was to disarm the listening male, to let him think he sees vulnerability, and to ensare him in the tender trap. Even as a child, Robbie had disagreed. Unless performed in Italy, barely anyone listening would understand the words. Audiences outside of Romance Europe fancied it a cheerful little jingle, not despairing in the least. They could not translate the desolation hidden within it.

Robbie cast a smouldering, venomous look at the blue elf before beginning.

"_Nel cor più non mi sento (Why feels my heart so dormant?)_

_Brillar la gioventù; (No fire of youth divine?)_

_Cagion del mio tormento, (The cause of all my torment)_

_Amor, sei colpa tu! (My love, the fault is thine!)"_

He rode the performance out with a bubbly, effete, almost comical voice, giving up on expressing the arietta's buried sadness. True to form, the ovation was merry, without any real fire. Its blandness made him long for the evenings when, sneaking from Mamma's dressing room to the wings, he'd peer out to the stage and soak in the fanatical hollering, encores and tossed roses of the La Scala crowds.

At least the formalities of a recital gave Robbie an excuse to turn the rabble out afterwards. They filed up the stairs as one compliant flock, all but the rowdiest youths looking forward to their early bedtimes. Pixel took Sugar-Pie with him, and Robbie did not protest. The dog just would have gathered dust otherwise.

He looked around his empty, dishevelled lair, so suddenly returned to its former silence, and collapsed upon his recliner.

**


	12. Ten: Cessate Di Piagarmi

CHAPTER TEN

_O cessate di piagarmi_

_O cessate mi morir!_

_(translation)_

_Either ease my pain_

_Or leave me to die!_

— O Cessate Di Piagarmi

From the opera "Il Pompeo" by Alessandro Scarlatti

Robbie's repose was short-lived. Within moments he opened his eyes, and was startled by Sportacus, once again kneeling before him and staring at him far too keenly.

"Hi. I thought I'd stay and help you clean up."

Robbie made a pained noise, curling into the back of his chair. What was _wrong_ with this hyperactive pixie? How many different ways could Robbie say to him 'leave me be' before it got into his thick superhero head?

"Láttu mig í friði," he ordered.

"Ég vil hjálpa," was the bubbly response.

Looking quite carefree, he nimbly began darting about the place, picking up pizza boxes and soft drink cans. Well, Robbie was clearly physically outmatched, so there would be no literal kicking him out. Trying to summon the energy to at least shout at the elf, Robbie tottered over to the little nook of the lair that served as his kitchen and took a desperate swig of something that looked alcoholic.

His eyes falling on the streams of mess that still remained, it dawned on Robbie that tonight had been the first time that the lair had ever held guests of any description. It had always just been his father ghosting in and out to build things, and then him, all on his own. Solitude had been the norm as long as he'd been here.

The liquor came up almost as quickly as it had gone down, and he coughed and spluttered in the sink. Sportacus was at his side instantly, insisting that the man wash his face and drink some water. At least Robbie could accredit the glassiness in his eyes to the alcohol.

After he was seated and his breathing was regular again, Sportacus smiled at him, and patted his shoulder.

"Thanks for letting us come here, Robbie. We all had a great time. After tonight, I don't think anyone in town will call you a bad guy anymore."

Robbie's eyes narrowed as he clutched his stomach. "Well, they'd be wrong."

The hero's heart sank. He recalled that look Robbie had stung him with before he began singing. The last time they had been alone together, there had been a harmony, a sensation between them that was almost warm. Robbie had said that he trusted Sportacus. Friendlier words had never escaped his mouth, and the elf had taken them as a talisman of the soul that sometimes shone out from behind the man's insults and misdeeds. But now, he was in retreat again, and regarded the whole world as his foe.

He couldn't keep on doing this. Not after all that had happened.

"Things are different now, Robbie," Sportacus said, inwardly cursing himself that he couldn't phrase it better. "We've all been working together."

Robbie tossed his head haughtily, rising from his chair. "You forget," he muttered, "you and I are still enemies."

"No, you just _think_ that we should be enemies. I want to be your friend, Robbie. I like you."

The violent laugh he fired off was full of warning. "You don't like me, Sportacus. You barely even know me. And if you did know me, you'd detest me. I'm everything that disgusts you."

The elf stood his ground. "Then why did you say you trust me?"

Robbie though for a moment. "Because you're far too dense to try anything."

Again, he was falling back on insults. Something rose in Sportacus' chest.

"I don't believe you."

Robbie grinned and shook his head. "No, it's true, you really _are_ a world class idiot."

He began to slowly pace about, his long legs stretching elegantly with each step, and Sportacus didn't take his eyes off him.

"See, the only reason you take any interest in me is because 'domesticating the local hostile weirdo' would look good on your list of achievements. If I had, like the others, gushed and sighed and fawned over you the moment you flipped into town, I'd be invisible to you."

"THAT'S NOT TRUE!"

Both of them drew back. That was the first time in living memory Sportacus had ever lashed out at anyone. The feeling that had coiled around his heart was so unpleasant, all burning and prickly.

Robbie tried to respond.

"Y…"

"Stop making things worse than they have to be! YOU'RE the one who always starts these things! I've NEVER wished any harm on you!"

The villain was silenced. Their eyes locked, clear blue hitting smoky green.

"I give up," the elf announced heatedly, shaking his head. "Stay down here with the chip on your shoulder, Robbie. I hope you enjoy yourself, 'cause I'm not indulging you."

Without looking back, he shimmied up the main entrance pipe like a speedy mongoose escaping a lion's den.

He was so angry, that he made it halfway up the airship ladder before realising he was unusually cold. He suddenly remembered taking off his vest while he'd been dancing.

It, and his crystal, were still draped over the railing of Robbie's catwalk.

**

Through his splitting headache and the squall of tears clouding his eyes, Robbie eventually heard it.

He fought his way out of the recliner and shuffled towards the blur of blue cloth on the railing. Sportacus' crystal was beeping madly.

He picked it up. It was hot to the touch, and was emitting an unusual red-orange light. That was no doubt Robbie's own achievement. Ha, well done, villain.

Within a minute, Sportacus could be heard shimmying his way down the unlocked hatch again. The sight the elf beheld when he hopped into the lair just about did him in.

Too far gone to fight back his tears, Robbie sniffed loudly. Staring at the cold floor, he thrust out the bejewelled garment.

"Just take it," he murmured, his voice cracking.

Sportacus did so, while drowning in his own remorse.

"Robbie…" he whispered, trying to calm the injured animal.

The gap between them felt like miles. The crystal kept beeping insistently.

"I think…" the hero intoned softly. "You're in need, Robbie."

The tall man had grasped the railing, turning away from Sportacus. "I'm just…" he muttered. "Don't bother. I'm a lost cause."

The hero wished he could see Robbie's face. He remembered the face of the charming little boy in Bessie's photographs. He would have been a precocious, cosseted thing who sang and danced, and babbled happily to strangers in a dazzling array of languages. A boy who smiled often, enjoyed laughing and who loved without fear. Sometimes he still emerged in passing swishes, like shy goldfish swimming about in a murky pond.

What had been that nickname he was given?

Sportacus gently rubbed Robbie's back.

"Glannitino… Kæra Glannitino…"

Robbie finally turned to Sportacus, his face full of fire and hurt.

"How much have they told you!?"

The elf instinctively began to back away.

"Get out of here, you vampire!"

"Robbie… I'm—"

"GET OUT!!!"

The crystal continued to beep as Sportacus settled into bed, and as it slowly died, he miserably pictured Glannitino crying himself to sleep.

_A/N: Can't really think of anything to say atm, but I thought I'd give a heads up to you readers. I certainly haven't been ignoring your reviews, in fact I've been appreciating the feedback. Smoochies! :)_


	13. Eleven: Il Mio Mistero E Chiuso In Me

CHAPTER 11

_Ma il mio mistero e chiuso in me,_

_Il nome mio nessun sapra!_

_No, no, sulla tua bocca lo diro'_

_Quando la luce splendera'!_

_Ed il mio bacio scioglierà il silenzio_

_Che ti fa mia!_

_(translation)_

_But my secret lies hidden within me,_

_No one shall discover my name!_

_Oh no, I will reveal it only on your lips,_

_When daylight shines forth_

_And my kiss shall break_

_The silence which makes you mine._

— Nessun Dorma

From the opera "Turandot" by Giacomo Puccini

Stephanie sat cross-legged upon her bed, watching the gathering clouds outside and languidly toying with a lock of her hair. It was growing steadily longer, and the girl was reluctant about the next time Bessie would come around to trim it.

Two images had been running through her head all afternoon. The fate that awaited the garden of Deverhill Manor still plagued her, and she couldn't help but frown at the idea of an empty space replacing its macabre atmosphere and depth of history. A lot of horrible things had happened upon that plot of land, but she felt it was downright unhealthy to just to wipe away the past like that. Something was wanting, something needed preservation.

Her mind's eye also focused on an item she had seen in Robbie's lair on the night of the impromtu 'party'. Perched on the table next to his big cozy chair had been a potted flower bush—probably something like violets or forget-me-nots. The graceful shape the drooping stems made was sweet and haunting. Stephanie fondly imagined Robbie tending to those deep purple blossoms, doting on them with a tenderness he seldom showed to other living beings.

Stephanie decided she would decline Bessie's hairdressing services from now on, letting her thick tresses grow and drape her shoulders like Robbie's flowers.

"Here we are, my dear," Milford greeted as he entered the bedroom. Struggling a little, he deposited a big, dusty carboard box on the carpet. "This was squirreled away in a corner of the attic. I _knew_ I hadn't gotten rid of it."

"Oh, wow, thanks Uncle!" The girl leapt up and instantly started digging into the old carton, pulling out piles of paper.

"Some of the the stuff in there will be pretty boring, like bank statements and such," Milford told her, "but if you sift through enough you'll find plenty of goodies."

After hearing of Robbie's discoveries in his father's diaries, Stephanie had been inspired. The very next morning she had asked Milford if there were any similar artefacts or documents left by her own family. He was all too willing to provide her with any and all Meanswell paraphenalia he could find.

"Some of your mother's certificates are in there, as well as a few more photo albums, older than the ones on our bookshelf."

Stephanie dug out a fat, leather-bound tome that looked very familiar. "Hey, this is a copy of the town history book." She felt a flourish of warmth in her heart for the stories of centuries-old piracy and swordplay.

"Oh yes, you'll find the Meanswell name repeated many times in that book," Milford stated with a swell of pride. We've been here since the town's beginnings."

As the girl flipped through the contents, she saw that her uncle wasn't exaggerating. The word 'Meanswell' seemed to pop up with regularity on every second or third page. She came to rest upon a photo inset somewhere towards the end of the book. Though the image was in tones of sepia, there seemed to be something exceptionally colourful about it. In a garden, surrounded by a dense ring of flowers of every describable shape and texture, was a prim but benevolent-looking woman. Her carriage was proper and self-assured. There was something in the nature of her face that suggested a playful child still frolicked within her. Her straight flaxen hair was set in a neat bun, but for two long bangs that draped gracefully upon her shoulders.

"Hey Stephanie!" Came a lively voice from the window.

"Why, good afternoon, Sportacus," Milford twittered.

The elf was leaning in from the sill, his eyes bright but his smile non-existant.

"I need your help with something."

**

"To work, _miei scalpelli!_"

Robbie pulled the mask over his face. The smooth swings of his tools across raw material sent him into a pacifying sway. While his hand-eye coordination was in such demand, his mind couldn't wander into melancholy.

This invention had started as a labour of love. It had also become an escape from his problems. Not only was it a truly beauteous object, but it would, Robbie insisted to himself, fix everything. As he glided amongst the pearly contours of this icon, he flew free.

Sometime soon he would have to face the staggering task of destroying the garden. He would have to lacerate the weeds, sow the salt, and probably have the manor itself demolished. His ingrained laziness madly protested the whole gruelling burden. Nevertheless, it had to be done. The safety of the town and his own dubious sanity were at stake.

But for the time being, he entreatied the Fates to let him stay hidden, to finish off his silky white creation. Perhaps after it had worked its magic, and the spectre of Sportacus was no longer dogging the poor villain's steps, he would be able to rally the strength for it all.

That cruel banging noise from the hatch door interrupted him once again.

His curiousity almost surpassed his frustration. After that (mostly) unpleasant night, he would have though that Sportacus would be fearfully avoiding him, keeping a wide berth between himself and the old billboard. At least until his short attention span betrayed him.

Lethargically making it up the ladder, he opened the hatch and glowered as best he could at the twinkly blue eyes that awaited him.

"I…"

An agile foot fluttered backwards slightly. This could take all day. He looked more feeble than a lovesick English governess.

Robbie shook his head. "I'm going back inside now, Sportawimp."

"Robbie, I'm so sorry for everything I said that night. I really am. I had no right to get angry at you and be so disrespectful."

Damn that pleading tone of voice. Damn him for being so sincere. Ignoring the warning bells in his head, the villain acknowledged the apology. He cast a wary, yet obliging eye on the elf.

"And?"

"Well… I was thinking how I could make it up to you."

"Easy, get out of town," Robbie sneered.

Sportacus would not be thrown off so easily. "It must have been hard for you to decide that you'd clear your father's property, but I think it's very mature of you. It will be a lot of work to even get started. The job will be very tough by yourself. While my father is here to look after the town, I will offer you my help."

A chill went up Robbie's spine. The idea of Sportacus extending the hand of partnership rattled every one of his nerves. He collected himself, and scoffed at the hero.

"And what makes you think I even want your help?"

To his surprise, Sportacus did not crumble at this rejection. Instead, he grinned placidly. "I want to show you," he announced, "something that Stephanie and Ziggy spent all day on yesterday."

He promptly turned, and let out a sharp, beckoning whistle. Only now did Robbie realise that both of the children had been watching from the road nearby. The girl cradled a box in her arms, festooned with a pink ribbon.

"Ta-da," she sing-songed, lifting the lid to reveal a home-made cake topped with lashings of icing. It was a little wonky in places, but it seemed to fit the bill.

Sportacus crossed his arms. "They made this just for you. Not only did they want to thank you for letting us into your house, but they were worried. About how all this must be getting to you. Both of them spent hours in Stephanie's kitchen, with the sole purpose of cheering you up."

There was a glimmer in Robbie's eyes, and his lip twitched. Sportacus recognised the familiar emotional tug-of-war, and felt heartened.

"Wait a minute."

The man reached down and tore a chunk out of the dessert. He sniffed it carefully, and then stared at it hard. After a small taste test, he lifted his head.

A dangerous laugh rasped out of his throat. "You cretins must think I'm enormously stupid."

Stephanie's eyes widened. "What's wrong, Robbie?"

"First of all," he began calmly, examining the icing on his long fingers, "I recognise emotional blackmail when I see it. Sorry, but you won't being enjoying my guilt today."

Sportacus shook his head. "I'm sorry you feel that way—"

"Second of all, this is carrot cake!" His voice gained heat quickly. "I'm not some dirty deliquent whose lifestyle needs 'fixing'! Enjoying sweets doesn't make someone evil, you know!"

"That's not what we—"

"I'll bet this thing is full of aspartame, to boot! You can keep your low-calorie deceit!"

The defences were well and truly up.

He grabbed an even bigger chunk of the cake and hurled it at the stalwart, infuriatingly saintly cause of all his torment. The sweet, fluffy gift splattered right across Sportacus' face with a wet thud. Before he could even cry out in surprise, he keeled over, hitting his head on the steel ladder.

His graceful form lay still and heavy upon the metal platform.

"That cake," Stephanie said with quiet sorrow, as Ziggy hid his face against her, "was made with sugar."

**

The anxious silence was only interrupted by the soft padding of Stephanie's feet across the carpet. Níu refused the fresh apple she held out to him.

"If we shoved that into his mouth now, my dear, he'd probably pass out again from the shock to his system. That was a lot of sugar he absorbed. We'll keep him sipping this water for now, until all the glucose has dispersed."

Sportacus was out of danger, but he was still inert. He dozed on the sofa in the Meanswell living room, with his father perched upon the armrest by his head. Ziggy knelt in Milford's easy chair, decidedly uneasy, as the Mayor himself bustled about in the kitchen, preparing hot drinks. In the far corner of the living room, hunched over by the window, a downcast Robbie Rotten stared out at the light, silvery rainfall.

The moment he realised what he had done to the elf, he had leapt out of the hatch to his victim's side, utterly distraught. He'd ripped his own vest to clean the cake off of Sportacus' face, and slapped him softly in an effort to wake him. He had caused the hero to meltdown before, but this time, it had been an honest-to-god accident.

Níu's own crystal had alerted the elder hero to the emergency, and the moment he approached, Robbie fell by the wayside. Stephanie and Ziggy earnestly followed Níu's instructions, assisting with what little strength they had, as Robbie lamely followed behind. The villain considered it miraculous that the Meanswell front door had not been angrily slammed in his face.

"Has Sportacus ever had a meltdown in Lazytown before?" Níu asked, graciously accepting a mug of cocoa from Milford.

"A few times, but they were always minor episodes, and we managed," Milford answered.

Stephanie watched Níu savouring the chocolate drink curiously. "It's not something that happens with all elves?"

Níu grinned weakly, shaking his head. "It's not a common condition, but some of us are cursed with it."

The girl frowned. "Do you think it's diabetes or something?"

"I don't think it's something that humans could suffer from," Níu responded. "And it's not really about sweet things. He gobbles up mountains of fructose, the glutton. Something like organic honey or fresh sugar cane would likewise be okay. But your species' powdery sweeteners are very processed. Sportacus' body cannot tolerate anything too synthetic or polluted."

The televison was on, the sound muted. Níu watched the frenetic commercials absently. "I remember once, when he was a teenager, Sportacus went missing for a whole day. We found him passed out on the side of a freeway. He couldn't take all those fumes—he was bedridden for a week. That's why I'm so glad he has such a green country town to take care of. He wouldn't be able to watch over children amongst factories and rivers of sewerage."

The old elf fell silent again, watching his little boy's peaceful face. His weathered, gnarled hands lovingly stroked a stray golden curl peeking out from under his cloth hat.

"It's hard sometimes…"

Stephanie felt her eyes begin to prickle warmly with the beginnings of teardrops. "I always thought of him as being so strong…"

She slowly sunk into the cushion at Sportacus' feet, clutching her steaming cocoa.

"It would take an enormous dose of anything to actually threaten the boy's life," Níu reassured her. "But it is still something you should all remain aware of. He is more fragile than other huldufólk… most of them thought me mad to have given him the station of the tenth Íþróttaálfur."

"Because of his sugar meltdowns?" Milford asked, resting his arms on the kitchen countertop.

"Actually, many felt there shouldn't even have been a tenth heir," Níu stated. "We elves place enormous importance on the meaning of names and titles. The number nine is all about completeness. The final single numeral… nine planets in the solar system, nine months between conception and birth, the Christian Trinity repeated thrice… Many said I was to be the last of the line, the last to shun a hidden life and protect human children."

Níu hesitated for a moment before continuing. "Choosing Sportacus to be Íþróttaálfurinn Tíu confirmed this prophecy for them."

"Why?" Stephanie asked.

"Because… as well as being sensitive to toxins, Sportacus' condition makes it impossible for him to father any children."

A cry escaped the little girl's mouth before she could catch it. "No!... that's horrible!"

Níu bowed his head. "It is the real tragedy of his weakness. Having to accept this fact broke his heart. He adores children… the love he has for you youngsters is all the more precious because of it. He will need your friendship even more as you all grow older."

"We'll ALWAYS be friends," Ziggy blurted out.

"So there will be no Number Eleven?" Stephanie inquired worriedly.

This caused Níu to pause again. "I don't know," he answered honestly. "There are certain possibilites… Sportacus already has a young niece and nephew. And also…" he trailed off, gazing into the little girl's face.

"What?" She begged of him.

He grinned again. "Perhaps the outcome lies with my Tíu's own destiny."

The rain outside began to fall a little heavier.

"Ten is said to be the number of balance. The direct, singular number one, united with the ever-circling, mysterious zero. Two absolute opposites marrying to create something that symbolises perfection and equilibrium."

The body on the sofa began to stir. Sportacus' eyelids slowly quivered as the soft, hazy daylight hit his eyes and the tranquil hiss of the rain registered in his ears. Looking directly across from him, he recognised a dark figure floating in the cool whitish haze, and managed a smile.

"Hey Robbie…" he breathed weakly. "What're you doin' here?"

_A/N: I feel sooooo dirty for using Nessun Dorma, but it fit the end of the chapter so well. Ew, I almost feel on par with Andre Rieu in terms of tacky classical music. _ (Not that Puccini or Turandot are tacky at all, but that particular aria is done to death.)_

_D'you spot the (obvious) Jane Eyre reference, Kitty? :3_


	14. Twelve: Gigli E Rose

CHAPTER TWELVE

_Son tranquilla e lieta_

_ed è mio svago_

_far gigli e rose._

_Mi piaccion quelle cose_

_che han sì dolce malìa,_

_che parlano d'amor, di primavere,_

_di sogni e di chimere,_

_quelle cose che han nome poesia..._

_Lei m'intende?_

_(translation)_

_I am peaceful and happy _

_And it is my pastime_

_To make lilies and roses._

_I like these things_

_That have so sweet a smell,_

_That speak of love, of spring,_

_That speak of dreams and of chimera,_

_These things that have poetic names._

_Do you understand me?_

— Mi Chiamano Mimi

From the opera "La Boheme" by Giacomo Puccini

Robbie retracted his claws, apologised, and accepted Sportacus' offer of help. On the first day of work, he was in fact grateful for it.

Before they could sow salt upon the ground, there were great masses of plant-life that had to be shorn away. Not only were the trees unpruned and obstructive, but great patches of rogue ornamentals clogged the area. Bamboo, prickly pear and ivy had choked the delicate roses and lilacs that used to flower. In the few patches where lawn still grew, it was tall and unkempt, dotted with nettles and dandelions.

Their difficulties were compounded by the constant drizzle that had settled in over the town. The areas they worked away on soon went from jungle to mud flat, making the ground slippery and swampy.

The elf, of course, though it was all a jolly game. As Robbie knelt upon a tarp, swiping moodily at the weeds, Sportacus flitted about with a pitchfork and secateurs, vigourously felling the sturdier plants. They worked mostly in silence, with Sportacus throwing out the occasional optimistic remark about their progress.

Sometimes the odd townsperson would stop and watch the two, fascinated and reassured by the sight of hero and villain working together to clean out the garden. This made Robbie feel hideously self-concsious—not only for the blow to his increasingly withering notoriety, but because he'd had to forsake his usual beauty regimen for the project. His colourful silks, satins, lycra and cosmetics were left untouched in his lair, replaced by denim and practical work boots. When he complained, Sportacus insisted that he looked just fine. _Typical jock reaction_, Robbie had thought sulkily.

This surely had to be one of the most severe challenges of his life. Hard physical work, immersion in filth, dignity in tatters. And yet, just like with his other time-consuming projects indoors, something deeper than mere bodily senses drove him on. He could not abandon this labour any more than he could stop the pulse in his veins, or forget the lovely white gleam of the project that still sat unfinished in his lair.

On a day when Robbie was feeling relatively more cheerful, Sportacus impishly tossed a mud pie at his back. He wouldn't admit to himself how much he enjoyed the ensuing mudfight. Nor the delight he took in Stephanie's apalled reaction, when she saw the two men caked head-to-foot in the stuff. Robbie soaked in a bubble bath that night, enjoying a rare feeling of serenity and satisfaction.

Eventually the rain petered off, and sunlight sluiced into the town like gloops of thick treacle. The remaining plants, so used to constant damp and shade, quickly shrivelled in the light and warmth. It took only two days for them to cover every last inch of the grounds with sparkling white gems of sea salt. Nothing, not blossom nor weed, would be growing on this land anymore. Only the trimmed skeletons of spindly maple and larch trees remained standing.

**

During the spell of Spring rain, Stephanie had made good use of her time indoors. She had spent long hours sitting on her bed, poring over her relatives' books, albums, diaries and letters. Sometimes she would share her findings with her uncle, who displayed a benign interest. He would rattle off little anecdotes, the contents of which would spur Stephanie along other, unexplored branches of her family tree. The Meanswells were a highly cultivated lot, and each of her ancestors' achievements left her enthralled. But none quite so much as that of her great-grandmother.

She decided to pay Robbie a visit.

Clutching a bright magenta folder, she hopped up onto the platform behind the old billboard. She was not surprised to find the hatch open, nor to see a small, moss-speckled stone fountain sitting beside it, swaddled in rope. The final chore in the manor garden had been to salvage this object, which had once stood in front of the rotting gazebo out back. It was an object that Robbie quite liked, and Stephanie had been witness to his mild tantrum earlier in the day— neither he nor Sportacus had figured out how to lever it down the hatchway yet.

In the middle of the basin was a Romanesque lion scuplture: stately, ferocious, beautiful. Moss covered its mane, making it look all the hairier. It roared silently at the little girl.

"Robbie?" she called. Slowly she descended the ladder.

"Robbie, it's me. I have something to show you."

The lair seemed empty. Her reluctance grew with each step. The bouncing echo of her squeaking sneakers was the only reply.

Stymied, and a little uneasy, she lowered herself onto the recliner. Should she simply wait for the man to return home? Would he scream and carry on and toss her out if he found her sitting on his throne?

She recognised the flowerpot on his tea table, and she was delighted to be in its presence again. She lightly fingered the clusters of delicate blooms, taking pleasure in their softness. Her ears finally grew accustomed to the silence, and she began to make out a succession of very light scraping noises coming from one of the doorways on the far side of the lair.

"Robbie?" she squeaked.

All the doors were shut but for one. A faint light escaped from behind it, pooling on the grey floor.

Her trembling hand reached out to push it open, heart racing for what may lie behind it, for what dazzling hidden treasure her wily friend might be hoarding in the deep shadows beneath the earth.

It was white, smooth and utterly breathtaking. Caressing it gently with a square of fine sandpaper, Robbie pressed his lips to the object with all the dreamy affection of a bride in Springtime.

His eyes floated open, and he found Stephanie gaping from the doorway.

Neither moved for a long time. Any fiery rage which was trying to fight its way out of Robbie was pushed valiantly back down. His voice was of wispy sulfuric steam.

"You are not to tell anyone."

"I promise Robbie, I swear, it will stay between us," she pledged, her voice filled with as much contriteness and understanding as she could hold in her small body.

"Good," Robbie grunted. He wheeled away from Stephanie, deposited his sandpaper on a cluttered workbench, and turned back to her with his usual arrogant manner.

"You're too much of a goody-two-shoes to want to steal my chocolate supply," he mewed caustically. "So I can only assume you've barged in here to see me about something."

He eyed the folder in her clutches, sighed, and drew her out to the main chamber.

"What has our little pink princess found?" He inquired, crossing his legs over the arm of the recliner.

Stephanie blushed, feeling put on the spot by Robbie's abruptness. Fumbling about with her plastic sheets, she finally produced a photocopy of the picture she had found in the book of town history.

"This is my great-grandmother, Melissa Meanswell," she said, her confidence beginning to return. "She was a famous horticulturalist. She designed and opened Lazy Park. She also bred the first of that plant," she pointed to the shrub on the table. "It's called the Lazytown Lilac, it's been the town emblem since the 1950s."

Robbie cocked an eyebrow. "Very nice. I assume this is all somehow relevant to something more important?"

Rifling through another sheet, the girl showed Robbie a photograph of a young tree sapling sitting in a large terracotta pot.

"She also grew this plant, the only one of its kind. Do you know what it is?"

"Enlighten me."

"It's called the Anastasia Plum."

Robbie sat forward, his mocking attitude melting away instantly.

"I read her journal, which Uncle Milford was keeping in the attic. She said it was the very first living thing ever to be able to regenerate itself. To come back from the dead. It would be able to grow anywhere, even in the salty dirt in your dad's garden."

Robbie grabbed the photo out of her hand.

"Wh… what happened to it?"

"She only ever grew one Anastasia Plum tree in her greenhouse. She decided it was far too dangerous to let loose into the earth. All the seeds were vaccum sealed, freeze-dried and put away. In her will, she requested that they be buried with her in the stone mausoleum of the Meanswell family.

Robbie's mind was ticking over. He stared into the child's eyes. Both of them were of an accord.

"So you've checked the police records?"

She nodded heavily. "Lolli showed them to me. The coffin that your dad was caught opening was my great-grandmother's."

Robbie felt heavy inside. Though seated, he felt he had to lean a hand on the girl's shoulder for support.

"I'm sorry, Stephanie."

Her brown eyes were tender and forgiving. "It's not your fault, Robbie. You're better than what your dad was."

**

"I've got mail!"

Sportacus pranced over to the chute that opened upon the pristine airship floor. As usual, the pneumatic tube flew up at him, and he caught it effortlessly.

The paper was torn and uneven on one edge, as if it had been ripped hastily out of a ledger. The handwriting was unfamiliar, and made almost unreadable by its hurried pace and big ornate loops. Sportacus struggled to read it, his frown deepening as he deciphered it.

"_Dear Sportakook,_

_I need your help again. I want to re-enter the manor._

_Yours,_

_Robbie."_


	15. Thirteen: Babbo, Pietà, Pietà

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

_Mi struggo e mi tormento_

_Oh Dio, vorei morir!_

_Babbo, pietà, pietà!_

_Babbo, pietà, pietà!_

_(translation)_

_I languish and I suffer_

_Oh God, that I would die_

_Pity me, father!_

_Pity me, father!_

— O Mio Babbino Caro

From the opera "Gianni Schicchi" by Giacomo Puccini

The front door to the Meanswell house creaked open. Like a spring-loaded toy, Stephanie jumped up from her spot beside Sportacus on the front lawn.

"Well?"

Milford looked down at his neice and sighed. She stilled seemed so very young.

"Níu managed to talk me into it."

The girl gave a squeal of delight, wrapping her uncle's ample stomach in a grateful hug. Exiting the door behind him, Níu made sure that his grin was not too smug in the light of his victory.

"You can come this time," Milford told her, "but you are not to leave my sight. Understand?"

"Yes, yes, of course, oh thank you!"

Sportacus wondered how Robbie would react, allowing the girl to accompany them on the third exploration of the manor. The elf expected some resistance, though whether it was for the sake of a venture free of a frolicking prepubescent, or for the sake of Stephanie's own safety, he couldn't be sure.

**

It seems Robbie was too distracted to care.

"What are you hoping to find?" Sportacus asked the man, as the team of five ascended the hill to the old house.

Robbie shook his head. "I'm not entirely sure. The Anastasia Plum seeds were seized by the cops and re-interred in Melissa Meanswell's grave. I just have this gut feeling that there is something… I don't know."

The ambiance of Deverhill Manor had changed drastically since the first visit. Now, instead of chilling terror, it seemed to convey a sense of pathos and decay. With the garden now void of living plants, the sun was fully cast upon the building, throwing its dilapidation into sharp relief. There were gaps in the brickwork from where persistent branches and vines had lodged themselves. There were a few gaping holes in the roof, and the cast-iron latticework was severely rusted and crumbling away. The imprints of dead mould were still visible on many parts of the walls. It gave the same sad, anticlimactic impression of an ages-old magic trick being debunked and revealed as so much smoke and mirrors: Old, obsolete, perishing. No amount of repairs would be able to reinstate the structure's former integrity.

The interior was still fairly gloomy, given the dirty windows and moth-eaten curtains that still hung.

"Where did you want to look first?" Milford asked, looking to Robbie's dim silhouette.

He didn't respond, but paced in a small, slow circle, staring into the darkness. His turned towards the gracefully curving staircase.

"We haven't been upstairs yet, have we?" Stephanie piped up.

Níu approached the steps, testing the bottom one with his boot. It creaked hazardously.

"Wait," he instructed, and then placed a hand very deliberately on the banister.

Nothing new could be seen or heard, but Stephanie flinched. As the old elf's hand had hit the faded wood, she sensed something pass through the floor and into her body that felt very similar to the invisible, internal rhythm she experienced when dancing. It was not exactly electric, but it held a similar power.

"What was that?" She cried. Robbie was the only other person who appeared to have felt it.

Unperturbed, Níu stomped his foot down onto the bottom step once again. The wood was just as splintered as before, and the carpet just as threadbare, but it gave out a sturdy, unyielding clonk.

"Alright," he announced. "When we get up to the second storey, Milford and Stephanie, both of you are to hold my hand. There could be weak spots in the floor, we don't want any accidents. Sportacus, Robbie, the same applies to the two of you. We'll progress slowly."

A sunbeam glimmering with dust could be seen hovering at the top of the stairs like a bright phantom. Each pair of eyes squinted as they adjusted to the slightly improved light. There was a great crack in the arched palladian window that looked out over the front gate. The remains of multiple swallows' nests encirled it.

Before Robbie had regained all of his eyesight, he felt something swiftly grab his hand.

His breath caught in his throat as the blue elf's warm fingers entwined with his.

"Hold onto me," he entreatied. Robbie's more familiar impulses wanted to rip his hand curtly away from Sportacus, but he found himself obeying the hero, being gingerly lead across the floor to the East wing.

Down the narrow corridor, the gloom returned. A series of intricately moulded doors sat to the pair's right, and the odd recess, furnished with a window-seat, was to their left. Addled by the changes of fifteen years, Robbie tried his best to remember the layout. Because he'd always slept in the underground lair, he had frequented the upper stories much less than the lower. At the end of the hall, he recalled, lay the poorly-lit stairwell to the third floor, but he was not sure if it was at this side of the house or the other. Sportacus must have shared his interest, because they continued along the passage, heading for the set of double doors that faced them directly.

At length, they came to the threshold. Sportacus reached out his free hand to one of the door-knobs, but felt himself being pulled back heavily by Robbie. The elf turned to see him examining a framed plaque that sat upon the wall. It was a collection of lepidoptera— the bodies of preserved butterflies pinned up on display. It looked nondescript, but something about it seemed to trigger a reaction from the man. He turned violently again to the doorway, a kind of petrified recognition in his eyes.

Before Sportacus could make any sense of this, a startled scream reached them from the West wing. His crystal beeped insistently. Dashing away to the source of the sound, he lost Robbie's hand.

"Uncle!"  
"Don't struggle, or it'll widen the hole!"  
It was not one of the more flattering situations to be caught in. Half of the Mayor seemed to be sticking out of the floorboards like an egg lodged in an egg-cup. Sportacus watched from the doorway of what appeared to be a guest bedroom as Stephanie and Níu heaved the poor man out of his predicament. The naughty little boy in Sportacus wanted to laugh at his superior's loss of dignity.

"I'm glad Ms Busybody wasn't here to see that," was all Milford could say as he dusted himself off. He _had_ lost some weight under Sportacus' influence, but he couldn't bear the prospect of being denied Bessie's heavenly chiffon cakes.

Suddenly, the dust was shaken off the furnishings as a storm of crashes and frightful howling bled through the walls. It sounded as if wood and glass were shattering in damaging torrents.

Sportacus' blood froze as his crystal flashed again in the dark. He sped back down the hall towards the gruesome, hysteric din, leaving the others in his trail and invoking the Fates to have mercy.

"Robbie!..."

The noise reached a climax, and abated suddenly, just as Sportacus reached the double doors at the end of the hallway.

The room was a study, or at least it was once. Some ferocious poltergeist had ripped through it, leaving nothing upright. Heavy bookshelves had been toppled, their precious contents torn, battered and strewn across the floor. A glass display-case containing fragile keepsakes was now but a few piles of shards. The wallpaper had a few fresh, vicious rips through it, pictures on the wall had been smashed, and an antique globe in the corner had been battered almost out of recognition.

Upon the only clear patch of floor lay Robbie, hunched over and shaking badly. A few hoarse whimpers escaped him. His hands lay splayed upon the splinters and his head was lowered, like a slave bowing in deference to his master. Small tears in his clothing suggested cruel little cuts and bruises.

Lying by his right hand was an ebony staff with a silver tip.

An apparition, unearthly but clear as day, bloomed before Sportacus. A tall man in a flawless suit stared sharply down at the floor, his deep brown eyes stony with disappointment.

"Hold out your palm, Robert. Fifty strikes ought to be enough."

Something that was black and searing and freezing sat upon the elf's chest. He regarded the staff on the floor with more hatred than he had ever felt for a single entity.

Driven by a force greater than himself, Sportacus grabbed it off the floor. With one clean motion, he snapped it in two across his sinewy thigh.

Robbie, slowly recovering from his trance, peered up timidly at the other man. The gaze returned to him was kindly and consoling.

"Let's get you out of here."

Sportacus carefully hoisted Robbie up, supporting him with an arm, and helped him escape the dark hallway.

**

Finding the first available patch of open grass, towards the outskirts of town, Sportacus sat his languishing companion down against the base of a tree. The other three watched fretfully from a distance. A few mute tears had escaped down Robbie's thin cheeks, but he had not uttered a word.

"Breathe deep, Robbie," Sportacus instructed gently. "Just focus on the sun and the sky and the sound of the treetops rustling."

He shifted on the ground, and as he moved, long pale fingers clawed the front of his vest desperately.

"Don't leave me again," begged a tiny voice.

The elf placed a reassuring hand upon his drooped shoulder. He managed to settle himself into a sitting position next to Robbie, careful not to break the reassuring contact which he so obviously needed at this moment.

"It's okay," he murmured. "I'm not going anywhere."

The tall man slowly curled in on himself, leaning into the strong, warm body beside him. Dazed eyes fixed on the grass, his head found Sportacus' broad shoulder. He was braced with another arm around his side, and he was clutched protectively closer to the other man.

A dull sob eventually escaped, and it cleaved Sportacus' heart. He was holding a lost orphan in his arms, one who would never know the simple joy of having a loving father to depend on. His fingers found Robbie's dishevelled hair, and gently stroked the crown of his head.

Níu respectfully led the others away.

An unmeasured stretch of time passed. Robbie's cries ebbed in and out of existence, cooled by his protector's comforting shushes. A light breeze weaved its way through the neighborhood. Sportacus looked down at his helpless charge, wondering if he had drifted asleep.

He suddenly spoke, face still buried.

"I actually preferred him to be angry when he hit me with it. Bruise my back, crack my ribs, cripple my legs. Fine. I'd just curl up in my chair as I recovered, and read the filthy novels he didn't know I had, scribble out sour pubescent fantasies in my sketchbook, or write furiously in my journal, using the 'barbaric Viking tongue' that he forbade me from speaking."

Sportacus frowned. Robbie seemed to be describing all this with a very frank attitude. He settled back down, allowing the man to vent.

"When he was calm, my 'punishments' must have looked much more acceptable to the upstanding citizen. 'Hold out your palm, Robert. Fifty strikes ought to be enough.'" (Sportacus shuddered internally at the accuracy of the vision he'd beheld.)

"With that steady rhythm, I wasn't panicked enough to have adrenalin dull my senses. I squinted to hold back the tears. It wasn't the pain, I could handle that. It was the prospect of not having the use of my hands for a length of agnonising days. A younger Robbie spoke with his hands more than his mouth."

He tilted his head to stare out at the townscape.

"Sometimes, when I had delivered straight As for the whole semester, or when I'd managed to avoid trouble-making for more than a week, he'd actually reward me. No words of praise, he'd just take me out. To the bakery, to the record store, to the park. One time, we came across a pack of bullies from school. They began their usual chants and jeers, but were cut off by Dad's stern glare. I knew how well that glare made a boy stop in his tracks. A few harsh words and they slinked off. At that moment, I almost felt that I could love him."

"Sometimes he said, in a roundabout way, that _he_ loved _me_. That I had my mother's eyes. I was never molested, thank goodness, Dad had an entirely different breed of pathology to that. Sure, partly, these declarations of 'love' were a guilt trip. But I can't deny him his humanity— they were also an honest attempt to cross the huge rift that seperated us."

He paused, pulling his head back into Sportacus' shoulder.

"I still hate that more than anything," he moaned. "It's so much easier to just cast him as a black-hearted monster with a big bad cane…"

His voice began to splinter into sobs again. The elf was still trying to absorb all that Robbie had shared with him, and could barely endure the quaking of his slim frame as his tears fell once more.

It was futile to curse Deverhill's name. All sorrow and anger melted away from Sportacus' body, and all he could feel was an excruciating need to see a smile grace Robbie's lips again.

"Let's get you an ice-cream."

Robbie jerked upwards, staring at him with red-rimmed eyes.

"_I beg your pardon?"_

"I'm sure it will make you feel better."

He arose, standing at his full height. Just like that, the hero-vs.-villain boundaries had been re-established. Sportacus shook his head and chuckled at this. Robbie was a truly impulsive creature.

"You mean to say that Sportafruit The Healthy wants to buy Robbie Rotten some junk food!?"

"I just want to make you happy."

For a moment Robbie faltered, his eyes softening. Then:

"Well, I suppose so. Though I'm a bit worried that you might be losing it."

The elf smirked, and lead the way.

**

He concentrated on his cone of organic, sugarless, fruit-juice-sweetened frozen yoghurt, as Robbie squirmed with delight at the scoop of death-by-chocolate that the vendor was fetching for him. The elf sighed, regarding his compromise as a reasonable price for the glee that had returned to his companion's eyes.

As they sat down together on a park bench, Sportacus noticed that Robbie had ordered a double scoop. The one atop the black hole of chocolate was pale pink, fluffy and identical to the elf's own.

"What flavour is that one?"

Robbie looked away for a moment, then pouted at him.

"So maybe I felt like some frozen yoghurt too! Got a problem with that?"

Anything but. Along with his frozen treat, Sportacus savoured a delicious upsurge of something thankful and joyous inside him.


	16. Fourteen: Liebestod

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

_Mild und leise_

_Wie er lächelt,_

_Wie das Auge_

_Hold er öffnet—_

_Seht ihr's, Freunde?_

_Seht ihr's nicht?_

_Immer lichter_

_Wie er leuchtet,_

_Stern-umstrahlet_

_Hoch sich hebt?..._

_Ertrinken!_

_Versinken!_

_Unbewußt_

_Höchste Lust!_

_(translation)_

_Mildly and gently, _

_How he smiles_

_How his eye_

_Opens sweetly—_

_Do you see it, friends?_

_Don't you see it? _

_Brighter and brighter,_

_How he shines_

_Illuminated by stars,_

_rising high?..._

_Drown!_

_Be engulfed!_

_Unconscious_

_Supreme desire!_

— Liebestod

From the opera "Tristan Und Isolde" by Richard Wagner

Soon afterwards, Robbie uttered a subdued thank-you and scampered off. It was enough to please Sportacus.

When he met up with the children later in the afternoon, Stephanie demanded to know if the man was alright. The hero assured her that Robbie had recovered from the earlier shock enough to tease him, and the girl laughed. He decided against telling her about the frozen yoghurt. For some unsounded reason, Sportacus decided that it was something that should be kept between the two men.

The light began to fade, and the town started to settle into its usual nightly calm. Instead of heading directly back to his airship, Sportacus wavered. The moon was full and bright tonight, and something in its face nutured a disquiet which had sprouted in his mind.

He saw Bessie hurrying home along the empty pavement, and on a sudden whim, called out to her.

The woman's eyes widened with fear for a moment as Sportacus leapt into her path. There seemed to be something slightly unstable about him.

"Can I, um…"

She waited for him to collect his thoughts.

"I want to listen to Robbie's mother again."

Bessie smiled, somewhat relieved. She led the way to her house, and Sportacus stood awkwardly in the doorway as she bustled about in the living room. Soon she emerged, handing him an LP player and a stack of albums.

"Take as long as you need to work your way through these, but for goodness' sake, be careful with them."

He was grateful— not only for the kind gesture, but for the chance to absorb the music by himself. This was not the sort of thing he would dance to with the children. He bade the woman farewell, and Bessie watched his usually speedy form fade into the night as he gingerly carried the precious load back to his airship.

He called out his table and set the LP player upon it, finding his only power outlet and plugging it in. Black, boxy and made of wood, it looked entirely alien in his sleek white home. It seemed closer to the kind of thing that would be found in his father's old-fashioned airship. Nevertheless, Sportacus was all too keen to hear its rich, resonant crackle.

He picked up one of the albums, examining it curiously. Remembering the procedure Bessie had used, he slowly slid the black vinyl disc out of its case, threaded it onto the turntable, and with fretful fingers, placed the needle upon its ridged surface.

He jumped back at the grand blare of french horns. The recording he heard in Bessie's office had been light and playful, quite unlike this.

Looking at the album cover again, he felt his face heat up when he recognised the gorgeous jade eyes staring back at him. La Fata Lillà was clothed in the regalia of a Celtic princess, all woollen embroidery and graceful knotted patterns. As the firm, swelling sounds of Wagner filled the space, Sportacus ducked into his bathroom compartment for a shower. The combined aroma of frozen yoghurt and Robbie's scent still lingered on him— and such a cocktail was sure to deprive him of a restful night.

The warm water streaming down the elf's skin helped to calm him some. As he dried off and prepared for bed, he woozily admired the pure orb of the moon glowing in at him, and absorbed the rich sound of Lillà's song.

"_Mild und leise_

_Wie er lächelt,_

_Wie das Auge_

_Hold er öffnet—_

_Seht ihr's, Freunde?"_

The creature that was her voice revealed at every moment its immense spectrum. At once lodged in the deep rumblings of the earth and wheeling in the heavens, it ascended the suspenseful melody with fluid elation. It intensely shook each individual note with its throbbing vibrato. Fluttering and full, warm and almost violent… How true it seemed at this moment that she was the mother of the knave that currently reclined far beneath Sportacus in his ornate den.

He rode out the brutal climax of the aria, breath shortening for the resonations tingling in his body. Finally the strings and woodwinds ebbed away gently, and he shut off the player before collapsing into bed.

He stared up at the ceiling for a great ream of unmeasured time, and meditated on the still strips of moonlight on his blank ceiling. Sleep eluded him. He was eventually aware of the tenseness in his arms as he clutched at a corner of his duvet. What he could remember of the song circled in his head, a persisting eddy of melody. The night air was cool upon his skin.

Whether it was an enduring cloud of fragrance, or a memory brought to life by sheer will, Sportacus could still smell Robbie and the succulent berries of their afternoon treat. The aroma sent him further adrift, he was reeling in a fancy that was entirely peculiar and inviting to him.

Something sitting near him caught his eye. His crystal had burst into life— not blinking, but flickering rapidly, like the heartbeat of a trapped animal. He would have thought the sight beautiful if it weren't so off-putting— the gem had never done this before. Perhaps the surge of anger it had chanelled in Robbie's lair had affected it somehow. Sportacus watched it nervously, wondering if he should tell his father.

The shimmer refracted onto the airship walls like a score of playful fireflies.

**

All through the night and into the next morning, an uneasy, urgent feeling tugged at Sportacus. He needed to see Robbie again. It wasn't so much that the elf was worrying for his companion, but some cryptic instinct told him to seek out his presence. His imagination seemed to constantly rove in the direction of Robbie's tall, pale visage, and it felt as if the only way to shake off this agitation was to be around him.

Sportacus was expecting to be sleepy and sluggish the next day, but if anything, he was vigorous and jittery, buoyed by overstimulation. It wasn't long before he was face to face with the soul in question.

Each one of his senses, both physical and unworldly, leapt up wildly at the sight of Robbie. A whole new volley of emotions erupted inside the elf. The agitation he had been feeling tripled, and all sense of calm evaporated. But eclipsing everything was a searingly sweet kind of glee, one which warmed his cheeks and fixed a smile across his face. Robbie's scent, which had been just a faint, teasing spirit before, was now swimming about him luxuriously.

"It's too early in the morning to be that happy, Sportadope."

"I'm just… it's nice to see you, Robbie."

The man tossed his head and rolled his eyes.

"Cute. Anyway— I thought about it last night, and decided I'm still not finished inspecting the manor."

Sportacus frowned. "But what about what happened yesterday?"

The response was an edgy silence and an averted gaze. It was obviously not easy for Robbie to dwell on this. "Well, that was a very… particular situation. I think I'll be able to handle it this time, as long as someone stays with me. There are things remaining in there worth recovering. I already compiled a list of a few objects which I would like to collect. The structure is far from stable. Even if I don't have it demolished, it will probably collapse by itself within months."

His eyes drifted away from the elf once more, and his expression clouded over.

"I just don't want to lose everything."

Something greedy in Sportacus' gut raised its scaly head. Neither his father, Stephanie nor the Mayor would really be required for such a task— it was only Sportacus who needed to assist Robbie. After all, he had been the one closest to the man in this whole ordeal.

Let it be him who would feel the gratification of assisting this fragile coxcomb, and receive the scant gratitude he would bestow. Let it be him who would imbue a satisfied smile upon that haughty face.

Robbie felt the force of Sportacus' gaze, and looked back at him hesitantly. The elf's thin moustache twitched ever so slightly.

"I promise I'll help you," he vowed.

**

Nothing about Sportacus' opinion of Robbie had changed, or even intensified. He'd wished for the man's friendship since the beginning, hoping that all the resentment he harboured for others would give way to a better attitude. And since learning of his family, Sportacus had also prayed that Robbie's despairing alienation would come to an end, that he would find some way to heal himself (this particular outcome, with painstaking effort, seemed to be happening already). At the very least, he had always admired his sinuous physique, piercing eyes and seemingly endless array of talents. There had never been a time when Robbie didn't matter to him. The only change had been in their proximity to one another. The familiar pattern of the villain luring in the hero before pushing him away had grown more extreme, more involving. One moment he gathered Robbie in his arms, the next he watched the man flee and scorn him fearfully. It was exhiliration of the most sublime and apalling kind.

A whole week passed before Robbie announced that he was ready to enter Deverhill Manor for the final time. One part of Sportacus was very understanding of this— it should only take so long for him to muster the psychological strength needed to raid his father's posessions. Another, darker part of the elf burned with impatience— he craved the gratification of being Robbie's protector and servant on this mission. Every day, he sought out his companion, happy to see that his visits above ground were becoming more frequent. He laughed at his quips, soothed his snappishness and endured his insults patiently. Níu caught sight of these interactions once or twice, giving his son a look that was a cross between surprise and appreciation.

At long last, the pair embarked on their salvage operation, starting with two shaky afternoons of scouting out the manor and tolerating its misery long enough to decide what was worthy of retrieving. Robbie spent the second evening finalising his list, organising every item in the order that it should be carried out the door.

On the third day, the sun rose upon a sprightly elf bounding his way over to the old billboard, eager to start shipping out their plunder. Robbie's pre-noon grouchiness eventually gave way to better feelings. He watched agape as Sportacus smoothly lifted the black piano from the parlour, carrying it with ease and gentleness out of the manor. He set it softly upon the garden's wide stone footpath.

"I would have thought your thundering, blundering gait would have chipped and scratched the old thing to bits," the man remarked.

Sportacus just smiled at him. "Robbie, I wouldn't dream of being careless with anything of yours."

Robbie soon got into the spirit of the enterprise, taking a great deal of pleasure in telling Sportacus exactly what to do. He led the elf slowly through narrow doorways and down the newly reinforced staircase, until a respectable pile of opulent yet well-worn objects appeared before the manor. Once the sun had climbed higher in the sky, the two had completed the list, and they agreed to rest before transporting everything down to the lair.

Being a creature sensitive to heat, Sportacus opted to sit on the porch steps, in the remaining shade of the building. Robbie reclined upon the weathered stool of the black piano, legs crossed and arms stretched back leisurely. With nothing to say, his gaze roved slowly across the flat garden and the crumbling façade of the manor.

Sportacus' eyes were fixed upon Robbie himself. This rare moment of calm contemplation was catching—the elf was being lulled into repose for watching the man. There was a level of contentment in his demeanour. His pupils were large, and a modest smile curled the corners of his small pouting lips, like a cat resting by a fireplace. His slinky body hugged the rickety perch, utilising it cleverly for the comfort it could offer. The sun illuminated him akin to a spotlight. Mesmerised by the leisurely rise and fall of his chest, Sportacus' breath fell into the same slow rhythm. Should anyone have wished to capture Robbie's likeness in artwork, he mused, this should have been the image.

Faint echoes of whooping children in the street approached them steadily. The moment was to pass.

"Woah!"

"Robbie, how are you going to fit all that down your hatchway?"

Before he could answer Pixel's question, he was set upon by an enthusiastic robot dog. Sugar-Pie leapt upon his lap, attempting to lick the face of his old master. Robbie noticed a cheerful orange collar and name tag were now affixed to the 'animal'.

"You should see what I've programmed him to do."

"What are you kids doing here?" Robbie demanded, managing to push Sugar-Pie back down.

"I asked Mister Níu where Sportacus was," Stephanie said, "and he told me you two were clearing out the manor." She turned to Sportacus. "He told me to tell you that he's happy to look after the town while you're occupied with Robbie, but not to be too forceful."

"Too forceful?" Something crept up the elf's spine on hearing this.

The girl shrugged back at him.

"Do it, Pixel! Do it do it do it!"

Their attention was drawn back to Sugar-Pie, who Ziggy was kneeling over in anticipation.

"Sugar-Pie, dance," commanded Pixel.

At once, with a mechanical whir, the dog was up on its hind legs, twirling about dizzily to an imaginary melody. Ziggy applauded feverishly.

Stephanie looked to the piano. "Robbie, why don't you play something for him to dance to?"

Robbie frowned at the instrument. "On this old thing? I'm sure it's well out-of-tune by now. It needs serious repairs. I doubt the mallets will even make a sound."

He blithely struck one of the keys, and started at the full sound it produced. The piano's voice had become extremely tinny, and the note was a little flat, but it was more or less producing a noise that could be equated to music.

"Yay, it works!" Ziggy declared, bouncing up and down.

Robbie experimentally bashed out a few chords, and content that it was tuneful enough, launched into a light sonata. Sugar-Pie's ears perked up, and his carriage changed, following the beat of the perky tune. The presence of a real melody and a stable tempo bestowed a strange, mathematical grace on the dog's movements. It was as if the once malevolent robot was a cobra in a basket and Robbie the fakir.

"Stingy, don't touch that!" Bellowed Trixie's voice.

Launching himself off the stool, Robbie apprehended the boy, who was rifling through the pile of other objects. "Yeah, what she said, kid," he snarled.

He snatched from him a musty, silvery ballgown, with a long gossamer skirt of muslin flowing out from the bodice. He smoothed out the fabric tenderly.

"This was being preserved in mothballs. After surviving fifteen years in an old wardrobe, I don't want it ruined in the space of five minutes by some pint-sized kleptomaniac."

Stingy pouted, still eyeing the exquisite garment.

"Oh, there's more!" Stephanie gushed, carefully examining a whole pile of colourful dresses, still in protective packaging. Robbie did not scold her.

Trixie snorted a laugh. "Like father, like son, Robbie? Your dad must have called himself 'Lola' on weekends!"

He summoned a look of utter distate for her, pursing his lips. "They were my mother's, you scruffy little wag."

Stephanie had unwrapped a dress of deep indigo, accented with a gauzy stole.

"I still have a photo of her wearing that one," he remarked. "She was an extremely beautiful woman."

"Does she live underground with you?" Ziggy asked innocently, staring at Robbie.

He felt the full weight of his heart as it tightened in his chest. He endeavoured to find an appropriate answer.

"She lives in heaven now," he explained, attempting a smile.

The six-year-old wasn't fooled, and a wave of different expressions passed across his face. Instinctively he ran to Sportacus and cleaved himself to his hero. Robbie exhaled, feeling guilty. He exchanged an awkward glance with the elf as he comforted the disquieted child.

He felt someone tug on his sleeve. He turned to see Stephanie digging about in her handbag. She produced a photo of her own of a young family. The father was tall and athletic, the mother shorter and oval-faced, with long flowing locks of bright pink hair. The tiny baby in her arms stared at the camera with huge, curious brown eyes.

"These are _my_ parents," she announced softly, with an unfaltering pride.

Robbie nodded gravely. "How?"

"A car accident when I was two," she answered, warily keeping her voice down. "I sometimes cry about it, mostly because it's hard to remember them. But I still have my uncle." She smiled at him.

"STINGY!!!"

A deer-in-the-headlights Stingy was frozen, his small hand buried in an antique jewellery box. Both Trixie and Robbie glared at him as one. Wordlessly, Robbie held out his hand, and Stingy reluctantly passed him the object.

"But they're all so pretty…" he insisted in a tiny voice.

Robbie combed through the box. In the few months she had lived in Lazytown, Lillà had been given a formidable amount of jewellery. There were pearl necklaces, dangly earrings and many precious stones set in bracelets and pendants.

"These will all have to be cleaned. The bronze ones have faded. Even the gold and silver ones have become encrusted with dirt and dust." He sniffed disdainfully.

"May I have a look at those, Robbie?"

Sportacus had extended a hand, patiently waiting for his companion to oblige.

He shrugged. "I'm not that keen on them," he mumbled, "they were only trinkets that my father bought. My mother couldn't have worn any of them more than once or twice."

He shuffled back to the piano stool, and sullenly hit a few keys, watching the others. The children had gathered around their guardian, eager for a glimpse of the pretty ornaments. Sportacus shut the lid of the box, tutting at them teasingly. He paused for a moment. He raised his eyebrows, a grin swishing that moustache of his upwards. His admirers watched, baffled, as he put his lips to the keyhole and blew into the box softly. Robbie sat up— something in this particular action stirred him.

When he opened the box again, the group had to squint for the glare that bounced off the jewels within. Their original lustre had been restored, the sun playing cheerfully upon their sleek surfaces. The children gasped and prattled over the trick appreciatively, and Stingy was so enthused that he had to be restrained by both Trixie and Ziggy.

Sportacus handed the box back to Robbie. For a moment he examined the twinkling collection of baubles, then turned his face up to the astonished children again.

"You're so lucky, Robbie," Stingy declared.

An uncommon whim of charity rose up from somewhere and took hold of the man.

"You kids can have these if you like," he announced, trying to sound as detatched as possible.

"Robbie, are you sure?" Stephanie was agape. "All those precious jewels must be worth thousands."

The man reached into the box and pulled out a golden chain holding a teardrop-shaped, rose-coloured ruby pendant. He gently fitted it over the girl's bob, letting it rest about her neck. It looked slightly large on her, but charming nonetheless.

"Keep it, Pinky, it's a gift," he replied with a friendly gruffness.

A ginormous smile split her little face, and as she grappled Robbie in a hug, a rapid flurry of greedy hands snatched the box from the man and seized the other jewellery (Stingy took the lion's share). Sportacus winced at the darkly greedy spirit the old ornaments seemed to have invoked.

When they had all looted their portions of the treasure, Robbie took back the discarded box. Remaining inside was a broken chain, a Victorian-style brooch and a small felt casket. A little intrigued, he picked this last item out of the box and creaked opened its gilted lid. Sitting inside was a dainty band of white gold, with a pure, sparkling diamond set in its centre. He carefully plucked it from its silken bed. He squinted as he scrutinised it. There was an inscription.

"_Ég elska þig_," he whispered.

Sportacus turned at the sound of his voice. "What's that?"

"He was going to marry her," the man murmured. There was a gloss in his eyes.

Stephanie had noticed what he was looking at. "That's an engagement ring!" She exclaimed.

Distracted from comparing their swag, the children huddled around.

"I think my father was going to give it to my mother," Robbie said quietly.

"They didn't get married?" Ziggy asked, quite amazed by this. Robbie shook his head.

"What's the inscription?" Stephanie asked.

"It reads 'Ég elska þig', Icelandic for—"

"I love you," Sportacus blurted.

A pink tinge instantly glowed upon Robbie's ivory cheeks. His eyes glinted brightly in the elf's direction for all of a second before fixing themselves down upon the ring again. He twiddled with it restively.

"He was going to marry her," he said again, a fainter echo this time.

"You should keep that ring for yourself, Robbie," Stephanie insisted.

He experimentally slipped it onto his finger, held his hand to the light and studied it. Absently, his head tilted to the side, his tapered eyebrows dipping in concentration and his lips pouting again. The diamond glittered happily back at him in the sunlight. He wondered if it had ever touched his mother's own finger.

Sportacus stared at him, drawn closer without moving. He decided then and there that nothing had been, was, or would ever be more radiant.

**


	17. Fifteen: Esser Difforme

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

_Quel vecchio maledivami... O uomini! O natura!_

_Vil scellerato mi faceste voi_

_O rabbia! Esser difforme, esser buffone!_

_(translation)_

_The old man cursed me...O men! O nature!_

_You turned me into a contemptible and evil being_

_O Hell! To be misshapen, to be a clown!_

— Pari Siamo

From the opera "Rigoletto" by Giuseppe Verdi

Carefully hanging Lillà's frocks up in a wall-panel wardrobe, Robbie made sure that the precious raiments were properly covered in protective plastic. It was so sad that such ravishing outfits were doomed to never be worn again. Perhaps he would make a gift of them to Stephanie once she had grown up. If the girl was lucky, she might develop the same elegant, curvaceous figure as his Mamma.

There were a few piles of things to sort through yet. Some flower vases had survived, and a dusty collection of books from the parlour needed a space on Robbie's crowded bookshelves.

"Hey! What are you doing? Get out of that!"

Sportacus had opened the lid of the grand piano, and had stuck his head inside. Earlier in the afternoon, they (or more correctly, Sportacus) had carried it down a wide tunnel hidden out in the dairy pastures, to a doorway that only Robbie, and a few observant cows, had known about before. He'd sworn the elf to secrecy.

"Sorry… I heard something rattling about inside while I was carrying it," Sportacus explained, holding up his hands in repentance.

Robbie shoved him out of the way (no mean feat, even when he was all compliant like this) and swept the lid out, securing it on its ebony brace. The light in the lair didn't reach inside its great cavity very well— all the pair could see was the piano's regiment of blotchy old steel strings. As Robbie strained his eyes to make out what he could, Sportacus reached down and, without warning, lifted one of the piano's legs off the floor.

"Sporta—!"

Something fell upon the strings, creating a dissonant metallic crash. It rolled out of the darkest, farthest corner of the instrument's belly, into the elf's waiting grasp.

There were two objects: a heavy sack, and a large, thick glass jar filled with dark, murky liquid.

Wordlessly, the pair gazed at them. Robbie shivered. He felt that he was on the brink of an exciting, terrifying discovery. A secret stash as bizarre as this could not bode well in any way.

"You should probably open this first," Sportacus advised him warily, handing him the cloth sack.

After undoing the sash, he reached a white hand inside, expecting some horrid object to meet his skin.

Instead he pulled out what looked like a precious stone. Uncut, perfectly rounded, it glimmered softly. He reached inside again. There were more. A whole pile, from the looks of it.

"What do you suppose these are?" Robbie pondered. He looked back to Sportacus, who was completely stunned.

"Are you okay?"

The elf snatched one of the gems from his companion's hand, staring at it hard.

"Hvað…" he breathed.

Puzzled at the reaction, Robbie opened the sack further. There was something bulkier at the bottom. Reaching his hand in, he pulled out a book.

"This is another one of dad's diaries…" He flicked through the yellowed pages and recognised the handwriting instantly.

"We need to tell my father about this, Robbie," Sportacus said urgently.

"In a minute." Robbie was absorbed in trying to read the faded script.

"I'm going to fetch him," the elf insisted, and the next moment was darting up the stairs.

Shaking his head after the retreating figure, Robbie sat in his recliner and stared down at the diary pages. He had found the last entry, the densest of the text, and braced himself. What other irreligious monsters had his father tried to create?

"_This damned elven magick is truly maddening. Every time I come close to understanding its essence, it eludes me further. It does not do for a mind of reason and sequence to follow this gibberish. I am still mystified on how such disparate components can come together to create these miracles of nature._

"_Even so, I have no doubt that not only will this witchcraft be required, it will be the very catalyst. Genetic mutations can only go so far— they govern the flesh, not the soul. Despite what those superstitious naysayers claim, biochemistry is powerless against the overwhelming force of the living spirit, the true life essence. If it wasn't, I would have easily accomplished my goal by now. _

"_These difficulties have been such that I am quite tempted to attempt contact with the Svartálfar. (The Ljósálfar, such as that flipping imbeciele Níu, would string me up for attempting these experiments.) They would be able to advise me on the correct path to take, but I am not sure I could wholly trust their counsel._

"_I have used but ten fibres of flesh thus far, and have created ten crystals. Each of them have been perfectly lifeless. However, this does not deter me— the moment of truth will be when I finally manage to implant the elusive Anastasia gene into my Lillà's exquisite heart. My own experiments in isolating this mutation in plantlife have failed (my maudlin, foolish sentiments actually felt it would be found in lilacs themselves!), but I have caught wind of another's research in this. Either through my own exertions or the exploitation of another's, I feel finding Anastasia will only be a matter of time._

"_My own heart still creeps with doubt, however. Elven flesh is, as far as I know, far more unpredictable than human flesh. God only knows what will happen when I generate the pentultimate crystal. It may change nothing: My elf-bride may remain cold and dead in the hard Icelandic earth I returned her to upon extracting her heart. Or, heaven forbid, the poor sweet fairy may be reanimated as a rotten, unthinking zombie— this black possibility plagues my rare hours of sleep._

"_I know I play the role of Judas, flirting with evil knowledge to bring about the resurrection of one of the holiest beings to ever light upon this wretched sphere. But she is my religion, my messiah, my goddess, and as I freely live and breathe I can do no less._

"_Her ghost haunts me still. Only a Lillà of warm, firm flesh and blood can remove me from this hell. With the elf-crystal, both her heart and her LIFE will be entirely mine, and she will no longer refuse the ring I had crafted to fit her beautiful finger. She will pledge under both her Pagan Gods and my Christian dogma to love, honour and obey. Her soft, gentle hand will lead our half-breed child back into respectability, and I will hear him praise his father for her return from the dead. My elf-bride will sing only for me. She will submit, and I will be her slave from that day hence."_

An eternity passed.

The dull echo of footfalls could be heard upon the hatchway ladder.

"Kristallur!?"

"Já!"

"…Hve??"

The two elves hopped down from the pipe, and stopped in their tracks at the sight that was Robbie.

**

Robbie's heavy eyes finally fell upon Níu.

"You knew, didn't you?"

He returned the gaze silently.

"You saw my mother, you saw me. You knew."

Níu heaved a long sigh.

"Yes," he answered. "I did consider telling you, but I was confident that you would never believe me."

It had been very hard to witness the drawn-out suffering of a boy who was not only a fellow countryman, but also one of his own kind.

Robbie stared into space again. He opened his mouth, closed it, and rallied the bravery to toy with the phrase.

"I'm an elf."

"You're half-human, Robbie," Níu stated, "but you boast enough elven blood to qualify as a member of our species, yes."

"Wh… why didn't she tell me?"

Níu crossed his arms. He summoned faded, decades-old memories: An unruly little songbird of an elf-girl, one who he had teased and played with in his youth.

"Lillà's time amongst other elves was difficult. She was always a restless soul, one who longed to see the world and learn of other folk. Her parents strongly opposed. Her father was part Svartálfur, and extremely suspicious of humans. When she ran off to Sweden, a rift was formed. She was still loved, and missed, but there was a bitterness to that love. I think she feared that once her family knew of your existence, they'd claim you, and take you away from her. It was a deception borne of protective love. It's a good thing your poor grandfather is dead and gone already. He'd be horrified to learn that he had a half-human grandson."

"Dead…" Robbie repeated.

Sportacus rushed to his side. "Maybe that's enough for now," he soothed, "perhaps I can—"

"No," Robbie pressed on. "I…"

His attention drifted over to the long-forgotten glass jar, still sitting by the piano.

He looked hard, and made out the gruesome shape of a heart floating in the murk.

"Mamma!..."

Tears that had long threatened to fall began flowing freely down his cheeks.

Sportacus went to console him, but the hero was hotly pushed away.

"No!" He exclaimed. "I'm sick of this town! I'm sick of it poisoning everything!"

"Getting angry won't solve anything," Níu declared.

"I'm sick of being alone and rotten and feeling like an enormous chunk is missing from me! All of you, ALL of you are just suffocating and patronising!"

He had stormed across the floor, bashed open a wall panel and was now throwing objects into a pile on the floor.

"Robbie…!"

"Don't act rashly, Robbie."

The half-elf stopped in his tracks, giving Níu a look of sincere disgust.

"Fine words!! Fine words coming from the hero who just stood by and watched as one of his own was abused and hated and turned into a bitter outcast!" He dragged out a heavy violet trunk from behind his flank of glass tubes, and started casting the pile of objects into it.

Sportacus' pulse began to race. "What are you doing?"

"Going home, finally," he spat. "Going to find the remains of my family, going to create some semblance of a life. But first…" He picked up the glass jar from off the floor and prowled up to Sportacus.

"…I'm going to re-inter the heart which was RIPPED FROM MY MOTHER'S DEAD BODY by her merciless devil of a lover!!"

Robbie's monstrously enraged expression stopped Sportacus' own heart. The half-elf shook the jar in his face violently with each word, and Sportacus sickened when he saw sections of the greyed organ pressing against the edge of the glass.

"Good riddance to you and your little human friends," he finalled, stashing the jar inside the trunk and dragging it across the floor. "Don't bother closing off this dump on your way out."

He disappered behind the row of tubes, and the two remaining men heard a hidden steel door fly open and slam shut.

They saw no more of him.

**


	18. Sixteen: O Patria Mia

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

_Oh patria mia, mai più ti rivedrò!_

_Mai più! mai più ti rivedrò!_

_O cieli azzurri o dolci aure native_

_Dove sereno il mio mattin brillò..._

_Or che d'amore il sogno è dileguato_

_O patria mia, non ti vedrò mai più._

_Oh patria mia, mai più ti rivedrò!_

_(translation)_

_O my country, never more will I see you!_

_Never more, never more will I see you!_

_O azure skies, o sweet native breezes,_

_Where the morning of my life shone peacefully..._

_Now that the dream of love has vanished,_

_O my country, I will see you never more._

_O my country, never more will I see you!_

— O Patria Mia

From the opera "Aida" by Giuseppe Verdi

He lived for all of three days upon his island homeland.

On the first day, he trudged the concrete of Reykjavik. Seeking out the townhouse overlooking the bay, the one in which he had taken his very first steps, he found it had been knocked down and replaced with a designer coffee house. His secret gully below the copse of birch trees at the playground was still there, and he huddled inside it as he savoured the bitter taste of a designer latte in the cool Spring air.

In the middle of a grey city square was an iron statue of his mother. She was clad in the garb of Brynhildur. An idealised version of her face was tilted upwards, unseeing eyes cast to heaven as she sang out an imaginary aria. He touched her hand, it was freezing. Streams of businesspeople hurried past as he wondered how much of his father's money had gone into this ghastly effigy.

The city's largest cemetery was a forest of stones. It seemed the Icelanders had long forgotten their Viking roots, clinging to Christian custom as if it were their very own. After a short while, he found her grave— he had remembered standing under a naked Winter tree and throwing a bouquet upon the coffin as it descended into the pit. The cherubs on the headstone still stared down at the ground, and the unresponsive bones that lay beneath it. They alone would have witnessed his father digging her up and slicing her body open. It would have been mere hours after the boy had said farewell. One of the cherubs' wings had been ripped off by some vandal or another.

Instead of repeating his father, he merely placed another bunch of lilacs down beside the headstone.

On the second day, he quitted the humans, and went in search of his family. His feet now meandered across the stony, mossy inclines of the wilderness, following only his lighter whims and deeper instincts. He touched the rocks, imploring them to respond to him. He hoped that he would be able to hide with them, or at least call them out. Great bogs of blackened cloud kissed the horizon, and he chased the stark glimpses of sunlight. His breath quickened, his heart pounded, but as the light began to fade, not another elf had been seen.

As the milky blue twilight settled in, he miserably accepted his rejection by the Huldufólk. He felt he could almost hear their scornful laughter on the frosty wind. As he hiked back to the nearest town, Venus peered through the clouds and winked down at him. He saw some movement in a distant crag. It looked to his eyes like a small sheep, strayed from its flock.

On the third day, he sought out a compliant patch of earth. Traversing the wildnerness once more, he found a winding river— he guessed the soil would be softer in its vicinity. A few frightened rabbits darted away as he struck the ground with a spade. It did not yield.

All across the river delta he persisted, for hours and hours, straining to find a place where he could dig. Alas, even in the Spring, the Icelandic earth was hard and resistant. It would not accept her heart. Leaning on the useless spade, he sank to the frigid ground and wept for his mother's unquiet slumber. She, like her ruined half-breed offspring, would never be whole again.

At midnight, frozen through, he gathered up the glass jar, forsaking the spade and the earth, and headed along the river, towards the ocean.

Staring at the black waves, he could not help but feel a surge of anger at her. True to her race, she had spent all her life hiding. Hiding from her people behind costumes and arias. Hiding her leaf-shaped ears under bright lilac ringlets. Hiding from her lover in an opulent Reykjavik townhouse. Hiding her son from the truth. She had passed the curse onto him, and he hid underground, behind equally theatrical disguises, and kept his true intentions secreted away in the darkness. He had lied and protested and denied for so long, not even his kin could recognise his grey-green eyes and pale skin.

There was nothing left for him here. His cold, beautiful homeland had not responded to his cry. His final wish was for the first rays of morning sun to turn him to stone.


	19. Recondita Armonia

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

_Recondita armonia di bellezze diverse!_

_È bruna Floria, l'ardente amante mia,_

_E te, beltade ignota_

_Cinta di chiome bionde!_

_Tu azzuro hai l'occhio_

_Tosca ha l'occhio nero!_

_L'arte nel suo mistero_

_le diverse bellezze insiem confonde..._

_(translation)_

_Hidden harmony of different beauties!_

_My passionate lover is a brunette_

_And you, unknown beauty,_

_Are framed by fair hair,_

_You have blue eyes._

_My love has dark eyes._

_The mysterious art_

_Mixes the different beauties together..._

— Recondita Armonia

From the opera "Tosca" by Giacomo Puccini

A violent storm from the Arctic swept over Lazytown one evening, and Deverhill Manor collapsed.

Sunlight struggled to return during the next afternoon, bursting through irregular patterns of still heavy clouds. Níu stared at the great hilltop ruin of wood and stone impassively. Ignatius was at peace, although he had left his lover and son to prowl the earth as hungry ghosts.

The old hero was completely unsurprised when Robbie passed through the rusty front gate, standing beside him as he took in the sight of the rubble.

"You win," the half-elf growled softly.

Níu shook his head. "This was not my doing, lad."

"I don't mean this," he replied, indicating the fallen palace. "Iceland spat me out. The Huldufólk don't want me. Either they didn't recognise me, or they were determined to discard the last half-breed spawn of their tearaway daughter. For whatever reason, my doom lies here."

Níu stared at him, absorbing this bleak self-prophecy. A feeling of disgust ran through him. He shook his head.

"You truly are lazy. Blessed as you are with charm, talent and beauty… You waste it all on crafting for yourself a disaster far more dramatic than any of those ill-fated heroines staged by your mother."

Robbie could not look back at him. Soon, he stalked away, hoping that he could shut out the echo of those words by returning to his discarded lair.

**

Sunset finally saw off the dismal overcast sky. Tendrils of reddened sunbeams poured through the town, the last smattering of clouds glowing at the edges. Sportacus, who had been still and morose for a maddening length of dim days and sleepless nights, was springing across the damp emerald grass. He lighted on the patch of lawn before Stephanie's window, the kaleidoscope sky flickering in his eyes.

He looked into her room, beholding the little girl hunched over on her bed, staring down at her rose-coloured pendant. It had not been out of her sight since it had first been placed about her shoulders.

"Stephanie!"

Her head snapped up.

"Robbie's back!"

A few moments later, two wisps of pink and blue were flying through the tranquil streets, heading for a weathered old billboard.

**

He had clenched his eyes shut, blankly studying the swirling patterns in the dark.

He started. There was a clanking and lilting echo bouncing down from the hatchway. It took barely a second to recognise their voices. Oh, this was painful. He was surprised that the novelty those two lively little pixies held for him had not yet worn off. He would have to indulge their superficial interest patiently. He no longer had the heart to ridicule them.

"Robbie!!" Stephanie launched herself onto him. Her hugs could strangle a bear.

Sportacus watched the two of them, brimming over with relief. As this morning had rolled in, he had begun to consider searching for Robbie, terrified at what he might have found. Seeing that his companion had returned home without doing himself any noticeable harm was a comfort beyond words. His new aim, as he had outlined to Stephanie, was to do everything in his power to assure Robbie that in this town, he was wanted, cared for, irreplacable.

Robbie gently pushed Stephanie back onto her feet, patting her shoulder. The elf took this opportunity to approach him, but his attention was ignored. Robbie strode purposefully across the floor and up the stairs.

"Where are you going?"

"Just out to the store, while it's still open." His voice was low and hoarse. "I'm dying for a nip of something strong and warming. You guys want anything?"

Stephanie put in an enthusiastic order for fruit juice, and Sportacus made him promise to return quickly.

The little girl hopped into the recliner as the door clanged shut, enjoying the feel of the soft, fluffy fabric. "I'm going to bake him another cake to begin with," she mused to her friend.

Sportacus was a little distracted. "He seemed really depressed… we're all going to have to make a real effort to cheer him up."

Stephanie nodded. Suddenly the two were listless again, and silence followed.

"Hey…" he whispered, his moustache twitching.

"What?"

"Try and catch me!"

In a hearbeat, the elf had leapt up and was tearing across the floor. Stephanie's squeal was partly glee, and partly reprimand. She could not trust her friend not to topple over any of the delicate machinery.

"SPORTACUS, GET BACK HERE!" She cried, puffing after him as fast as she could.

After days of sitting around in his airship and worrying, the feeling of his legs pumping vigourously, reminding him that he was a living, breathing animal, had been too delicious. He leapt over the steel catwalks, wheeling about gracefully when he met with walls and corners. All across the massive chamber he dashed, his young protégé following his winding path.

"Don't… we'll get in trouble…!" She panted.

He cartwheeled through a steel archway into a dark, wide recess lined with doors. He ricocheted off one door, the harsh metallic sound ringing through the underground. The blue blur swept across the length of this half-enclosed space, unthinking.

He barged through the doorway sitting opposite, and stopped.

**

The room was crowded with stools and desks, the desks were crowded with a variety of tools and materials. Out in the open centre of the area, upon the floor, sat a canvas tarp. Upon that tarp was a drift of white, powdery filament. In the centre of that filament was Sportacus' mirror image.

He knew it was some kind of stone, but it looked as if it should be anything but. The sculpture was smooth and sleek, a spirit captured in liquid form and line, silky, undulating, limber.

This second Sportacus was leaping off of a rock bordered by clouds of little flowers. His cloth hat was escaping off of a mop of fine, loose curls flying in the backdraft. Eyes that were still and sightless smiled in a moment of pure joy. The living Sportacus recognised his little crows' feet and the very slight curve in his nose.

He noticed the way the musculature of his arms was flexing subtly. He noticed the way the grass beneath his boot had been flattened. He noticed the slight quiver in his smile, an almost invisible trace of fear.

Spellbound, he reached out to touch the gleaming white masterpiece, and at once felt the ghost of the loving hands that had brought it to life.

He backed away slowly, wanting to take in the whole sculpture at once. He started as the back of his thigh met one of the desks. Turning around, he was astounded further by the mess of journals and loose paper sheets, each and every one filled with prepatory sketches. Some were quite mathematical— gridded blueprints calculating weight distribution and dimensions. Others were freer, more lucid. They recreated his movement, his physique, his smile, his spirit.

Sportacus picked one of these drawings up. It was a pencil study of his portrait, head turned and eyes cast mischeviously out to the side. In the corner of the page, in the same nervous, loopy writing Robbie had used to contact the elf in his airship, was written:

"_Would you seize and fix and capture_

_All his evanescent rapture?_

_Bind him fast in golden curls,_

_Fetter with a chain of pearls?_

_Would you catch him in a net,_

_Like a white moth prankt with jet._

_Clutch him and his bloomy wing_

_Turns a dead, discoloured thing!_

_Pluck him like a rosebud red,_

_And he leaves a thorn instead;_

_Let him go without a care,_

_And he follows unaware._

_Love, oh Love's a dainty sweeting,_

_Wooing now, and now retreating;_

_Lightly come and lightly gone,_

_Lost when most securely won!"_

"Sportacus, you shouldn't be in here."  
Stephanie's face was grim. She wasted no time in seizing his arm and trying to haul him out of the room. For the first time ever, she was unable to make him move.

"Sportacus, come on!..."

All he could do was stare down at the paper in his hand.

As the seconds ticked dangerously by, Stephanie's struggling became more frantic. She whimpered, trying and failing to remain composed. The elf remained as motionless as his marble likeness.

From out in the main chamber, the sound of a bag full of glass bottles could be heard falling and smashing upon the floor.

Within seconds a shadow fell over Sportacus and Stephanie, blocking out the light that filtered in from the larger room.

Neither of them could make out the expression on Robbie's darkened face.

They heard his breath, deep and slow.

"Well, Stephanie," he said at length. "You broke your promise."

She shook her head madly. "Robbie, I swear, no, I'm so sorry…" she stammered.

Swiftly and viciously, he grabbed her arm.

"WERE YOU JUST WAITING FOR THE RIGHT MOMENT TO SHATTER ME!?"

She cried out in distress. This was enough to stir the elf.

"Robbie!" He pounced, tearing a spidery white hand off of a soft little arm. He stood between the two, shielding the child.

The light from outside fell on him. His face was perfectly stern, his voice calm and flat.

"I wandered in here by myself. Don't you dare accuse her. She warned me, she tried to keep this promise you talked about."

The tightness in Robbie's posture flew away. He fell limp under Sportacus' fierce gaze.

"So be it," he growled miserably. "Go and share your disgust with the others. Awaken their loathing of me again."

He flung an arm out towards the marble sculpture.

"This is disgusting, is it not, Sportacus!?"

The hurt in his voice softened the elf instantly.

"Robbie—"

"What a crime against nature this is!" His tone was suddenly playful and callous. "The devil has broken the worst taboo of them all! He has allowed something as repulsive as love to trickle into his evil soul! How strange that something with no heart should feel heartbreak!" An angry, ironical laugh roared its way out of him.

Sportacus choked on his unreleased tears, unable to approach him. Stephanie clung to the elf desperately.

"Well? What are you little cherubs waiting for? Go and tell them! Go and and declare my unforgivable offense to the world!"

The stars were twinkling sweetly when they reached the surface once more. Having to leave the lion alone in his dark den, thorn still lodged deep in his paw, was more painful than anything either Sportacus or Stephanie could remember.

**


	20. Eighteen: Un Di, Felice, Eterea

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

_Un dì, felice, eterea,_

_Mi balenaste innante,_

_E da quel dì tremante_

_Vissi d'ignoto amor!_

_Di quell'amor, quell'amor ch'e palpito_

_Dell'universo, Dell'universo intero,_

_Misterioso, Misterioso altero,_

_Croce e delizia al cor!_

_(translation)_

_One happy day, I remember,_

_You flashed lightly into my life._

_And since that day_

_I've lived in tremulous posession of love!_

_Of that unspoken love,_

_The pulse of the universe._

_Mysterious, unattainable,_

_The torment and delight of my heart!_

— Un Di, Felice, Eterea

From the opera "La Traviata" by Giuseppe Verdi

"_Your garden is truly spectacular, Doctor Deverhill."_

"_Thank you. And please, do call me 'Ignatius'."_

"_I am sure you've had plenty of praise lain at your feet tonight by others, but do be so kind as to indulge me…"_

"_Regarding what, dear lady?"_

"_I… will not feel at ease until I have bestowed on you my own gratitude. For you to have sacrificed your time and money in bringing our company out to such a charming theatre, such a charming regional location, is something I will always remember. I am a small town girl myself, and having spent so long existing in all the crowded metropoli of Europe, being reminded of the smell of grass and the sight of mountains is an immense pleasure for me. You must hold such tender love for this town and its people to have arranged such a lavish experience as a Verdi opera for their exclusive enjoyment."_

"…"

"_Doctor?"_

"_I am afraid I must correct you, madame. Philantropist and patron though I may seem, I am spectacularly selfish."_

"_How so?"_

"_My interest in seeing 'La Traviata' play the Lazytown theatre is… Wait, I must start at the very beginning."_

"_Please do."_

"_My dear, you know I am an engineer. My life until recently has been rectilinear. I have lived governed by grants and commissions… logic, material, Newtonian law. Things of iron and steel have been my focus, and cold, flat right angles my ideal. I have become glutted with achievement: achievments which have cost me my poor frail wife, my humour, my youth. Do you know why I had my house built in this quiet little backwater?"_

"_No."_

"_By chance, I picked up talk that this town was touched by something enchanted. So quiet, so green, so unconcerned by human competition, it had attracted magick to its threshhold. They said that all manner of magical creatures lurked around here, casting their whimsy upon the sleepy, superstitious citizens. I longed for this. I see from the light in your eyes at this moment that you understand me perfectly. When I first moved here two Summers ago, I dedicated every hour possible to roaming the pastures, hills and forests in this territory. Long were my searches for fae folk, sprites, will-o-the-wisps. Alas, save for that goofy, far-too-conspicuous jester of an elf who looks after the little ones, my hunt was fruitless. I dully acquiesced, agreeing to settle into the role of gentleman-about-town. One evening I was invited to a dinner party by one of the other local swells. That very night, my spirit was changed forever. I found my fairy."_

"_Doctor?..."_

"_Over the tinny waves of a television broadcast, there she was. Dressed in angelic robes of lilac and purple, she sang 'Liebestod'. But it was I who died at that moment, instead of this ravishing Isolde. 'Ertrinken! Versinken! Unbewußt, höchste Lust!'…"_

"_Doctor…"_

"_Please, fairy!... if you do nothing else, just favour me with the sound of your exquisite voice caressing the syllables of my given name!"_

"…_I-Ignatius…"_

"_Oh! That is ambrosia. I digress… I had to have her. I would know nothing of delight or contentment until I could clutch her hand. I was so lucky to be a man of wealth and influence. I threw money and favours at every one of her contacts that I could reach. What care I for the punters of this town? They in the audience were invisible to me tonight. All I could see was her, dressed in Violetta's corset, singing, so intoxicating, close enough that she may behold me if the house lights were up."_

"…_I-I did!… I felt the gaze of someone— you, I could not tell, but I beheld…"_

"_Lillà… If you move on and forget me after tonight, I will die. Plant but one single kiss on my profane lips, and I will die happy."_

**

Again and again and again, Sportacus paced the length of his airship. All he could do was stare at the ungodly hour of the clock and wonder.

On and off throughout the evening, his crystal had blinked. It was maddening. The aid that the hero would have so gladly provided would only be rejected. His hope wavered off and on, his devotion burned brightly.

He stared out at the clear night sky. Robbie loved him. How long had he been concealing it? It pulled at him and buoyed him, like the deepest swell of the oceans. The abyss seperating 'hero' from 'villain' still loomed dauntingly as ever. He felt momentary bursts of near-insane courage, urges to reach out and capture him, resisting every protest.

The clock ticked over to a new hour. If he did one more lap of this floating cage, he would go crazy.

Not even bothering to call down the ladder, he leapt from the platform and landed upon the pavement, at once breaking into a fevered sprint. He just couldn't quiet the chorus of voices in his head.

After doing what must have been two dozen laps of the entire town, he ascended the hill to the ruined manor.

**

From here, one could see the whole town.

It was spread out before him in a pattern of shadows and streetlights. The night breeze was fuller up here, the air fresher. The trees rustled, and somewhere, a dog barked. It was not the spectacular vista of his airship in the heavens, but the experience was similar. Yet here, he was closer to the people, and could feel their collective life-force.

Sportacus ascended the vast, rickety pile of rubble, and stood at the top for a long time. He watched the town, he watched the treetops, he watched the stars. Everything was dead on this surrounding land, a lone patch of desolation in amongst life and spirit. The elf bowed his head, and mourned silently for the sad fate of this house and its short-lived dynasty. He had always looked upon other beings with a view to see their potential and merit. There was, he believed, always a way.

There was nothing left here.

He picked his way down the hill of broken materials, when he caught the slightest of movements in the corner of the empty garden.

When he recognised the bent-over form of Robbie curled up on the dirt, he hesitated. Perhaps, said one of the voices in Sportacus' head, it would be best to let him go.

Something more powerful than this unkind, foolish voice propelled him slowly up to the side of prostrate creature.

"Go home, elf."

Not this time. Sportacus would honour the new resolution that had awoken in his soul.

Both were silent and unmoving for some time, the standing figure searching for the right approach.

"Why didn't you tell me, Robbie?"

The moonlight crept higher in the sky, revealing him. He lifted his head from his hands, and after a long silence, responded.

"You needn't worry. The moment I get back home I'm going to take a sledgehammer and smash that thing to smithereens."

This horrified Sportacus to no end. "Please don't…" he begged.

"That has been my plan all along, elf," Robbie retorted sourly. "To channel all of these… stupid, suffocating feelings into something tangible and destroy them. So I can be free to rot to nothingness in peace."

The mean little crack that had formed in Sportacus earlier that evening started to grow, threatening to tear his beleaguered spirit apart.

"Why… for Odin's sake, why?"

"Because…"

Robbie shot up, and fretfully stalked away from the other man, up and down the side of one of the stone walls.

"Because," he spluttered, before turning again.

"A sweet angel of the Huldufólk coming to this town, only to be poisoned by the obsessive love of the… the local 'mad scientist'!?" He exclaimed suddenly. "Doesn't that sound familiar to you!?"

He stopped, kicking his foot in the soil. His attention was caught by a wayward moth, its white wings fluttering as it lighted daintily upon a splinter of broken timber.

To Sportacus' astonishment, Robbie ripped the lovely creature off of its perch and angrily crushed it to death. He cast the animal's pulped corpse down at his beloved's feet.

"Do you want me to do that to YOU!?"

A sob tugged at his snarling voice. "I… As much as I may hate it… the moment I first saw you, my genetic destiny was realised. I was terrified… I didn't want to become the heir to his destructive power. If I held my arms out to embrace you, I would crush your robust little frame. So I stung you. Pricked you. Held up every single colour that communicated my poison to you. Pronounced myself a thoroughly rotten fruit. Did all that I could to remove you from my reach forever."

Sportacus couldn't take any more of this. He reached out a hand towards Robbie, but his quarry flinched and backed away.

He continued. "I thought you were safe. It killed me, _killed_ me to think that I disgusted you, but it had to be that way. And… and still, you had to tease me, hope for me, fly within arm's reach. I'm sure you don't know the damnation of loving so deeply and being teased so constantly. And… the indifference you receive in return is… is…"

_Indifference!?_ Sportacus decided against reacting to this.

"You don't have to worry anymore. I am done. This gargoyle will crumble along with his darling marble idol. Go back to your brood of children and forget I ever lurked behind you, watching with desperate eyes."

His posture was hunched and defensive, his gaze downcast. One foot twitched, itching to flee. His long fingers were folded and held to his chest, as if Sportacus was about to rip out his heart.

How could he _ever_ forget anything so wretched and so beautiful?

He thrust one firm, booted foot forward, steadfastly.

Robbie instantly reacted, quivering intensely and accelerating backwards. The small bronzed predator followed him slowly and evenly.

"You're not running from me again, darkling."

The chase was over as soon as it had begun. Robbie gasped for breath, and then screamed as Sportacus toppled his tall frame and pinned him to the earth. He could barely struggle.

He was rendered even paler than usual, jade eyes flashing with adrenalin, warm tear tracks cutting through the grime and salt that hung on his cheeks. A piteous whimper from the half-elf managed to completely unravel Sportacus.

He pulled him to his breast, tender but tenacious. Under the strong, stout hands, Robbie was still shaking violently. Both of them were breathing heavily.

Embracing him was all Sportacus could think to do. He was a man of actions and deeds. From the way he saw Robbie move, fluid, flighty and feline, he percieved that the claim that the half-elf was the same as his rigid father was utterly false. No matter how hot his temper flared, his actions would always be that of his mother. For this reason, Sportacus gripped him all the tighter.

"Don't cry, Glannitino…I won't hurt you."

How to explain it all? Sportacus riled frantically at his own powerlessness. He had never been half as eloquent as his clever Glannitino, the consumate man of words and layered language. Enchanting was the poetry with which he spoke and sang, the diverse shades of his honey-and-thunder baritone. It was a gift Sportacus lacked, something he needed now, hungered for more than anything, a deep, pearled scarlet to his stark, bright blue…

He captured those pretty cherry lips in a forceful kiss.

He drew back quickly, surprised at himself. Robbie had been paralysed, completely taken unawares by the action.

The stuporous spell was broken by a light emanating from beneath them.

Sportacus' crystal was pulsating. The quality of the light was entirely unique. It was a single tone, one that broke all concievable laws of the colour spectrum. It was at once white, black, blue and red. Not frost, nor rainbows, nor the Northern Lights themselves came close to mirroring its complexity.

"Wh… what's it doing?" Robbie spluttered softly.

"I…" Sportacus didn't quite know how to answer. "It behaves like that when, uh… you're the only one who's ever made it do that."

He didn't know where this realisation had sprung up from, but it seemed to have done something entirely unsettling to Robbie. The darkling stared at the elf hotly, his breath quickening further.

"Þú… Það…" His utterances dissolved into near hysteria.

At once, Robbie took his hands.

"Líttil álfur minn!" He wept.

As if possessed by Freyja herself, he kissed the elf's hands, caressed his pink cheek and cried out with all the tortured worship of a devoted saint. He babbled madly as his lips roved across Sportacus' fingers and the warm contours of his face:

"Bello ragazzo, te amo, te amo… Aufenthalt, mein süß liebling, please… please… Je t'adorerai pour toujours, piccolo iddio!... Gioiello blu! Beautiful flickering sprite! Nein! Don't leave! Per favore!!"

Amidst this torrent of passionate speech, Sportacus could only distinguish one phrase, and it brought him out in heavenly shivers:

"Ég elska þig!"

He kissed Robbie back, lingering, and loving him completely.

**

At daybreak, the wealthier townspeople gathered at the old gates of Deverhill Manor, astounded. In the corner of the property, upon the salty earth, grew a healthy patch of exquisite flowers. Their colour was indescribable.

**


	21. Epilogue

EPILOGUE

_I made it through the wilderness,_

_Somehow I made it through._

_Didn't know how lost I was_

_Until I found you._

_I was beat, incomplete,_

_I'd been had, I was sad and blue_

_But you made me feel,_

_Yeah, you made me feel_

_Shiny and new!_

— Like a Virgin

From the album of the same name by Madonna

He couldn't bring himself to destroy the marble sculpture as he had planned. Instead he bequeathed it to the town, and Milford happily put it on display in the lobby of Town Hall. Nevertheless, Robbie was all too glad to be rid of the thing, dusting his hands of lonely idolatry forever.

"You did WHAT?"

Níu grinned the grin of an elder monkey: wise, satisfied, full of cheek.

"I told them to ignore you. They quickly passed the message on to every elf in the country."

Robbie fumed. Before he could launch into a full-on verbal assualt:

"You needed to learn your lesson, young man. You flew off in a rage to search for love and a home and a family, without appreciating that they were already right under your nose."

Sportacus beamed at Robbie, squeezing his hand.

"Fear not, though," Níu said placidly. "Now they know of you, your grandmother, uncle, aunts and cousins are eager to meet you. I'm sure you'll find time to visit. If not, your granny will _make_ time for you… she's always been quite the old battle-axe."

His granny was a battle-axe. Even the mere thought of this filled Robbie with affection.

"You know," Stephanie interjected, reclining against him, "it totally makes sense in a lot of ways that you're an elf. Like the fact that you always managed to fool us all behind those costumes."

"Not to mention fighting off that plant," he murmured pensively, pulling up the hem of his trouser-leg to examine the scar that was still embedded in his shin.

"Speaking of which," Stephanie asked, "how is my great-grandmother's lilac plant?"

Robbie smiled at her. "Just fine, Pinky. And I know exactly what I want to do with it."

Before he could divulge this, Milford interrupted with another serving of sandwiches for the group.

**

A special area was arranged in the middle of Lazy Park. A ring of posies and bluebells half-encircled the patch of rich soil.

Once the hole had been dug deep enough, Robbie lowered his mother's heart into the grave. The beautiful lilac shrub, which had withstood the loneliness and desolation of Deverhill Manor for so many years, was planted on top of it. No fancy headstone, iron statue or sculpted angels marked the place, only a small brass plaque that Bessie had commissioned.

"You've done her proud," she told the dutiful son.

Sportacus put an arm around him, allowing him to shed as many tears of exhaustion and absolution as he needed.

**

The elf had taken to calling his lover 'Glanni', dropping the old suffix. Because, he explained, not only was he not Italian, but to him, there was nothing 'little' about Robbie at all.

"So it was all this time, Glanni…?"

The two were knotted together upon the recliner, legs and arms coiled about one another. Sportacus slowly unravelled the locks of heavily-gelled black bangs that were twisted around his fingers.

"Hm?"

"All this time we've known each other. You've really loved me that long?"

Robbie grinned. "Not exactly. At first I just thought you were cute. And really annoying."

The other man laughed, quite satisfied at this capacity of his to annoy.

"Not a moment passed when you weren't on my mind, in one way or another. Then one afternoon, it just hit me."

"When?"

"It was when one of my machines— my makeshift trebuchet, no, I think it was my iron bombard— it backfired on me and I ended up rocketing through the troposphere. You zoomed up on that flying scooter thing of yours and caught me in your arms. My God, how everything swam and ached and tingled. For days and days afterwards. The moment I slammed into your clutches, I knew that I couldn't exist for another second without adoring you and wanting you madly."

Sportacus squirmed with pleasure, planting his lips on the side of Robbie's face.

"Not that I didn't kick and scream and struggle against it," he added mindfully. "Like I said, I thought I was no good for you. For your sake, I spent a lot of time hoping that you'd find some pretty, pouty damsel to fixate on… or better yet, that years from now, you'd look at Stephanie and see a beautiful grown woman. At least she's a chip off your own block. She's patient and gentle and could look after you far better than I could." A touch of sadness had crept back into Robbie's voice, and Sportacus bristled with the desire to chase it off.

"No," he answered firmly, scooping his Glanni into a passionate embrace. "Stephanie will always be my little sister. I'm afraid that it's the pretty, pouty damsel who has stolen my heart."

The elf kissed Robbie's petulant sneer, and they dissolved into a muddle of wordless, delectable intimacy.

Eventually, later in the day, they surfaced.

"By the way, my father wrote me," Sportacus mumbled, amidst pressing a rather swollen pair of lips to his lover's shoulder.

Robbie groaned, leaning his head back to allow better access to the smooth skin of his neck. "What does the old codger want? Another excuse to meddle, I suppose?"  
"Probably. He's asked that you, I and Stephanie all come to visit in September. And you have to bring some of your inventions to show your family."

Robbie sighed. "I suppose he's been boasting about me obscenely."

Sportacus nuzzled him adoringly. "Who wouldn't?"

Before he settled back down, Robbie posed another question. "Why does he want Stephanie along?"

The ministrations stopped. Those blue eyes fogged over with ambivalence. He looked as if he was considering divulging a bombshell of a situation.

Quite conveniently, his crystal beeped.

"It's Trixie, she's skateboarding without a helmet," the hero announced, leaping up. "Back soon, kettlingur."

He made himself decent, blew a quick kiss and dashed out of the lair.

Robbie shook his head, allowing himself a smirk. That sweet, dopey hero!— if Robbie himself was able to figure it out so quickly, then by the end of the day, he was sure to hear Stephanie's elated squeals at the idea of being coronated the eleventh heir of the Íþróttaálfur legacy.

He crossed the lair, sat at his workbench and tinkered placidly away, awaiting the return of his blue-eyed soulmate, and the little pink bundle of excitement that would no doubt follow him.

The End


End file.
